First Time The Company Plans Live Viewing Of A Launch And Recovery

When Blue Origin launches the New Shepard suborbital rocket for the 4th time on Friday, you can watch.

And that's a change in the SOP for the space company founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. Compared to other companies ... can you say SpaceX ... Bezos has kept his launch attempts out of the public spotlight until after the fact. But this shift may indicate that Blue Origin is becoming more comfortable with sharing its successes ... and potential failures ... with the world real-time, according to Geekwire.

One aspect of Friday's launch is the intentional failure of one of the three parachutes used to recover the payload section of the spacecraft. The capsule will land under two good parachutes, and use a retro-rocket system just before landing to cushion the return to Earth, if all goes according to plan.

Bezos has said that his current anticipated timeline calls for test pilots to begin flying atop the New Shepard booster next year. The company hopes to offer a suborbital flight experience to paying passengers in 2018.

Everything about Blue Origin's New Shepard is autonomous, so those test "pilots" may not have a lot to do during those early flights except monitor systems and prove that it is safe to fly.

Friday's flight has a manifest that includes three scientific experiments.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.blueorigin.com