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Blue Origin is an American privately-funded aerospace developer and manufacturer set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. The company is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal of dramatically lower cost and increased reliability. It is employing an incremental approach from suborbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work. The company motto is "Gradatim Ferociter", Latin for "Step-by-Step, Ferociously" or literally "Gradually Ferocious". Blue Origin is developing a variety of technologies, with a focus on rocket-powered Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing (VTVL) vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Blue Origin )〕 The company's name refers to the blue planet, Earth, as the point of origin. Initially focused on sub-orbital spaceflight, the company has built and flown a testbed of its ''New Shepard'' spacecraft design at their Culberson County, Texas facility. The first developmental test flight of the New Shepard was April 29, 2015. The uncrewed vehicle flew to its planned test altitude of more than and achieved a top speed of Mach 3. Another flight was performed on November 23th, 2015. The vehicle went just beyond altitude and both the space capsule and its rocket booster successfully achieved a soft landing. Late 2014 public announcements, and a contractual agreement to build a new rocket engine for major US launch system operator United Launch Alliance (ULA), have put Blue Origin into the middle of the orbital spaceflight technology business, as a rocket engine supplier. In September 2015, Blue Origin announced plans to manufacture and fly its orbital launch vehicle from the Florida Space Coast. , ULA is also considering the BE-3 for use in a new second stage—the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage (ACES)—which will become the primary upper stage for ULA's Vulcan orbital launch vehicle in the 2020s. The Vulcan will begin orbital flights in 2019 with an existing Centaur upper stage, and is considering three engines from various manufacturers for the ACES stage which would begin flight in 2023.〔 〕 == History == Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has been interested in space from an early age. A profile published in 2013 described a 1982 Miami Herald interview Bezos gave after he was named valedictorian of his high school class. The 18-year-old Bezos "said he wanted to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for 2 million or 3 million people who would be in orbit. 'The whole idea is to preserve the earth' he told the newspaper .... The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park." Since the founding of Blue Origin, the company has been famously tight-lipped about its plans.〔 The company was formally incorporated in 2000, but its existence only became public in 2003, when Bezos started buying land in Texas and interested parties followed up on the purchases. This was a topic of some interest in local politics, and Bezos' rapid aggregation of lots under a variety of whimsically named shell companies was called a "land grab". In January 2005, Bezos told the editor of the ''Van Horn Advocate'' that Blue Origin is developing a sub-orbital space vehicle that will take off and land vertically and carry three or more astronauts to the edge of space. The spacecraft is based on technology like that used for the McDonnell Douglas DC-X and derivative DC-XA. Bezos told Reuters in November 2004 that his company hopes to progress to orbital spaceflight. , the company's website announced that it hopes to establish an "enduring human presence in space", but the 2007 version talks instead of aiming to "patiently and step-by-step, to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go and so that we humans can better continue exploring the solar system". Science fiction author Neal Stephenson worked part-time at Blue Origin until November 15, 2006,〔() 〕 and credits Blue Origin employees for ideas and discussions leading to his 2015 novel Seveneves. As of 2006, Blue Origin discussed plans of placing the ''New Shepard'' in commercial suborbital tourist service in 2010 with flights about once a week.〔 By 2008, the publicized timetable stated that Blue Origin intended to fly unmanned in 2011, and manned in 2012.〔() 〕 In the event, the first developmental test flight of the ''New Shepard'' was April 29, 2015. The uncrewed vehicle flew to its planned test altitude of more than 307,000 feet (93,500 meters) and achieved a top speed of Mach 3. In a 2011 interview, Bezos indicated that he founded the company to help enable "anybody to go into space" and that to do so, he must focus on two objectives: thus, the mission of Blue Origin is to decrease the cost of access to space and increase the safety of human spaceflight. , Bezos has invested over $500 million of his money into Blue Origin.〔 〕 In September 2014, the company and United Launch Alliance (ULA) entered into a partnership where Blue will produce a large rocket engine—the BE-4—for the successor to the Atlas V, a -class launch vehicle that has launched US national security payloads since the early 2000s. The announcement included that Blue had been working on this engine for three years prior to the public announcement, and that the first flight on the new rocket could be as early as 2019.〔 〕 In April 2015, Blue Origin announced that it had completed acceptance testing of the BE-3 engine that will power the New Shepard space capsule that will be used for Blue Origin suborbital flights.〔 〕 Following New Shepard’s maiden flight, Blue began accepting registration for early access to tickets and pricing information for suborbital spaceflights. In July 2015, NanoRacks announced it was teaming with Blue Origin to provide standardized payload accommodations for experiments flying on Blue Origin’s ''New Shepard'' suborbital vehicle. NanoRacks provides services such as payload design and development, safety approvals, and integration. In September 2015, Blue Origin announced the high-level details of a planned orbital launch vehicle, indicating that the first stage would be powered by the Blue BE-4 engine that is currently under development while the second stage would be powered by the recently completed BE-3 rocket engine. In addition, Blue announced that they would both manufacture and launch the new rocket from the Florida Space Coast. No payload or gross launch weight was given. Bezos noted in interviews that this new launch vehicle would not compete for US government national security missions, leaving that market to United Launch Alliance and SpaceX.〔 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Blue Origin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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