Blue Origin

Development Flight, and We are Hiring

Blue Origin wants you! Actually, Blue Origin needs you and wants to hire you … assuming you’re a hard working, technically gifted, team-oriented, experienced aerospace engineer or engineering leader. If you might be interested in joining us, please keep reading.

We’re working, 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. Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we’re working on it methodically. We believe in incremental improvement and in keeping investments at a pace that's sustainable. Slow and steady is the way to achieve results, and we do not kid ourselves into thinking this will get easier as we go along. Smaller, more frequent steps drive a faster rate of learning, help us maintain focus, and give each of us an opportunity to see our latest work fly sooner.

Our first objective is developing New Shepard, a vertical take-off, vertical-landing vehicle designed to take a small number of astronauts on a sub-orbital journey into space.

On the morning of November 13, 2006, we launched and landed Goddard – a first development vehicle in the New Shepard program. The launch was both useful and fun. Many friends and family came to watch the launch and support the team.

Here’s the vehicle coming out of the “barn” in the wee hours of the morning:

Being lowered onto the launch and landing pad:

Just before launch as the sun is rising:

We brought a jumbotron so our spectators could have a better view. This photo is from a few days before launch when we scrubbed because of winds:

Our extraordinary administrative support team thought of everything – including bouncers for the kids:

And delicious chuck wagon food. Open fire biscuits … need I say more?

Here is a video of the launch. Click on the image to play. Maximum altitude on this first development flight was about 285 feet.

And now the kids think that their engineer parents are pretty cool:

The vehicle headed back into the barn:

My only job at the launch was to open the champagne, and I broke the cork off in the bottle. : ) Fortunately, our other valve operations went more smoothly.

A few additional videos. This on-board video shows a landing gear and a thruster. You can see small movements of the thruster as it vectors to control the vehicle:

On-board video pointed straight down at the pad:

On-board video pointed at the horizon:

Low frame rate but high resolution fisheye video of the launch (no sound):

As an aside, all the images and videos on this website are served by Amazon's Simple Storage Service. S3 provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve data from anywhere on the web. It gives any software developer access to the same scalable data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own websites. If you're interested, you can learn more at aws.amazon.com. (Yes, that was a brief sales pitch for Amazon Web Services, and now I return you to rockets.)

As I said above, Blue Origin is actively hiring. We are particularly looking for experienced propulsion engineers and experienced turbomachinery engineers, as well as a senior leader to head our turbopump group. Folks with turbopump or propulsion experience on large, modern, cryogenic engines such as the RS-68 are of particular interest.

Another high priority for us is an experienced leader for our structures team. Structures experience on large, modern vehicles such as Delta IV or Atlas V is of particular interest.

We are searching to fill other positions as well. Please check out our careers page on this website. Feel free to send a note and resume to our head of recruiting, Walt McCleery at wmccleery@blueorigin.com.

I cannot say enough about the team we already have. They are hard working and ingenious and experienced. It’s a sincere pleasure for me to witness, and I’m grateful to them.

Gradatim Ferociter!

Jeff Bezos
January 2, 2007