![]() ![]() Estimated to be worth $447 billion, the space industry could reach $1 trillion by 2030, according to estimates from McKinsey and the World Economic Forum. The question may get more attention in the coming years. She also didn’t comment on why the test site’s flare was not used to burn the gas, a step that would greatly reduce the climate impact. It’s unclear from state documents if those numbers reflect current operations, and Blask declined to clarify. The state air regulator, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, doesn’t impose limits on methane emissions or require disclosure of releases.Īn air permit application filed with the TCEQ in January 2020 said the company expected to routinely dump LNG into the air to the tune of 3.4 million cubic feet a year, which would work out to more than 60 tons of methane. “There were no issues or reporting thresholds exceeded.” She declined to comment on how much gas was released. Everything operated normally,” said Sara Blask, a spokeswoman for Blue Origin, in an email. ![]() “We frequently transfer LNG from our suppliers into storage tanks at our engine test stands. There’s no indication of how long it lasted. The nonprofit group Carbon Mapper analyzed the readings and estimated the gas was escaping at about 1.5 metric tons per hour. The June release was detected by an instrument on board the International Space Station, which happened to be zooming past that day. The rocket that crashed on Monday had flown eight times before, but it was not immediately clear whether those past missions included humans. Blue Origin flew New Shepard 15 times before its first crewed flight.It turns out that Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin LLC, routinely emits the stuff because it’s developing a rocket that runs on liquefied natural gas, which is almost pure methane. The rocket-capsule system has flown 31 people in all under Blue Origin's suborbital space tourism business, in which paying customers are launched some 62 miles high for a few minutes of microgravity at the edge of space before their capsule returns to land under parachutes.īillionaire Bezos, the Inc AMZN.O founder who started Blue Origin in 2000, was among the first passengers to fly New Shepard during its debut crewed mission in 2021. The mission, called NS-23, was the first New Shepard launch without humans aboard in over a year, and the fourth mission in 2022. There are no reported injuries all personnel have been accounted for." "During today’s flight, the capsule escape system successfully separated the capsule from the booster," Blue Origin tweeted after the mishap. Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees and regulates launchsite safety. Blue Origin's fleet of New Shepard rockets is grounded until the FAA signs off on the outcome of a company-led investigation into the mishap, the agency added. The booster crashed within a designated hazard area, according to the U.S. The capsule's abort motor system triggered almost immediately, jetting the craft away from the faulty rocket before parachuting back to land intact. Without any humans on board, the rocket lifted off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site Monday morning as the company's 23rd New Shepard mission, aiming to send NASA-funded experiments and other payloads to the edge of space to float for a few minutes in microgravity.īut just over a minute after liftoff, and roughly 5 miles (8.05 km) above ground, the New Shepard booster's engines flared unexpectedly during ascent. ![]()
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