FYI,

"A Secretive Aerospace Company Sheds a Bit of Light on Its Rocket
Program"
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/science/space/09rock.html?
ex=1325998800&en=4acd49e287879477&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

: Jeff Bezos finally gave the world a peek at his rocket.

: The billionaire founder of Amazon.com has an interest in space,
: and more than enough money to pursue his interests. In 2000, he
: registered a company, Blue Origin, and hired rocket scientists.
: But the company has been obsessively secretive.

: The last time Mr. Bezos gave out any kind of real information, he
: walked into the offices of The Van Horn Advocate in West Texas to
: tell the editor that he had bought 165,000 acres nearby and would
: be testing rockets there. When the company performed the first
: test launching on Nov. 13, it made no announcement.

: And that was it, pretty much, until last week, when the Blue
: Origin Web site (www.blueorigin.com) showed the first pictures and
: video of a gumdrop-shaped test craft, dubbed Goddard, rising from
: the West Texas launch site to 285 feet and then, eerily, returning
: gently to the pad.

: The announcement was, for the most part, a come-on for rocket
: scientists — or, as Mr. Bezos put it on the site, "hard working,
: technically gifted, team-oriented, experienced" aerospace
: engineers — to continue development of what the company calls
: its "New Shepard" spacecraft.

: That craft, as the site says, will be "designed to take a small
: number of astronauts on a suborbital journey into space." The pace
: is deliberate, with commercial trips starting as early as 2010,
: according to the page, which ends with the company's motto,
: Gradatim Ferociter, which (very roughly) translates as "step by
: step, fiercely."

: The Goddard has a science-fiction sleekness. Videos show the craft
: taking off and landing again with a loud whooshing sound. In one
: view, one of the nine rocket nozzles jitters as it maintains the
: ship's attitude. Goddard resembles the DC-X, another vertical-
: takeoff-and-landing craft under development in the 1990s by
: McDonnell Douglas for the Defense Department and NASA until the
: government pulled the plug. Several members of the DC-X team now
: work for Mr. Bezos, said William Gaubatz, the former director of
: the project, and "their ingenuity shows in the results."

: Mr. Bezos is entering a field that seems more crowded by the day.
: Sir Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, says
: he will take tourists to space in a ship created by Burt Rutan,
: the legendary designer whose SpaceShipOne was the first privately
: financed craft to send a person to the edge of space. Several
: other companies are working on projects of their own. But Blue
: Origin is "the most secretive of the group," said John Carmack, a
: computer game designer and founder of Armadillo Aerospace near
: Dallas.

: Mr. Carmack's company is testing its own spacecraft and is as open
: as Mr. Bezos' is closed, with monthly updates. "I'm thrilled to
: finally see something" from Blue Origin about its ship, he said.
: "I was really close to giving somebody a little money to go out
: there with a telephoto to get a photo of it."

Mark Reiff