FYI,

"Bezos, Amazon.com: Blue Origin Rocket Progress"
LiveScience
http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2007/11/21/bezos-amazoncom-blue-
origin-rocket-progress

: Progress in developing a vertical takeoff/vertical landing
: suborbital spaceship has been reported by billionaire Jeff Bezos,
: chairman and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. He is
: bankrolling Blue Origin, a rocket development company with
: engineering and manufacturing teams housed in a 280,000 square foot
: facility on 26 acres in Kent, Washington.

: Bezos described Blue Origin progress during a November 19 interview
: on the Charlie Rose television show that focused primarily on
: Amazon's Kindle, a wireless, portable reading device.

: Bezos noted that Blue Origin's first development vehicle — the
: Goddard — has been flown to low-altitude several times from a
: company owned 200,000 acre launch complex in western Texas. To
: date, the tight-lipped Blue Origin group has only publicized the
: November 13, 2006 first flight of that craft.

: "We are now working on a second development vehicle," Bezos said.
: "There will be at least one more development vehicle after that…at
: least, I don't know, maybe it'll be more."

: Blue Origin is building a vertical takeoff/vertical landing
: spacecraft that will take three or more astronauts to the edge of
: space, Bezos said.

: Dubbed the New Shepard program — paying homage to the 1961
: suborbital flight of Mercury astronaut, Alan Shepard — Bezos said
: that Blue Origin's effort is built on taking one step at a time.
: The company's motto, he emphasized, is Gradatim Ferociter, "step by
: step, ferociously."

: "We're not in any hurry…because we're trying to build a very safe,
: well-engineered vehicle. [I] don't see any reason to rush on this,"
: Bezos told Rose.

: In building a suborbital, tourist-carrying vessel, Bezos said that
: he doesn't know how big the public space tourism market is.

: "People have done studies that have tried to size this market. But
: I'm highly skeptical of such studies because you don't really know
: until you do it," Bezos explained. "But I do think this can be made
: into a viable business. You have to be very long-term oriented," he
: said.

: People who complained about a seven year-long investment in Amazon,
: Bezos said, would be horrified by Blue Origin.

: Bezos said he's looking forward to his own flight into space, on a
: Blue Origin vehicle.

: "I will go. I definitely will go. I can't wait actually," Bezos
: concluded.

Mark Reiff