UPDATE 2: Blue Origin Suffers Setback

UPDATE 2: Andy Pasztor at the WSJ has published an updated story of interest.

UPDATE: Now that the word is out, Blue Origin has updated its scant website with the following information: “Three months ago, we successfully flew our second test vehicle in a short hop mission, and then last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 45,000 feet. A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we’re signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. We’re already working on our next development vehicle.”

ORIGINAL STORY:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Blue Origin suffered a “major failure” during a recent test flight.

Blue Origin is backed by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. It won awards from NASA in both rounds of the agency’s CCDev competitions. The Blue Origin website provides little information about the company or what it is doing, but NASA’s CCDev announcement said it had awarded the company “up to $3.7 million for risk-mitigation activities related to its pusher Launch Escape System” and “to produce a composite crew module pressure vessel for structural testing.” NASA notes that Blue Origin is developing a vertical take off and landing craft, New Shepard, “inspired” the DC-X concept of the 1990s.