Bezos held fast to it, even as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson pushed up his own flight from New Mexico and beat him to space by nine days. ![]() There were also safety concerns, with the group stating that Blue Origin seemed more focused on beating billionaires Richard Branson and Elon Musk to space rather than tackling safety issues that would have slowed down the schedule.īezos blasted into space on July 21 on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date he selected for its historical significance. Jeff Bezos is getting shafted online over the shape of his big rocket. The employees, led by former head of Blue Origin employee communications Alexandra Abrams, state that “numerous senior leaders have been known to be consistently inappropriate with women.” They also claim that many company leaders were “unapproachable” and showed clear bias against women. Blue Origins New Shepard rocket lifts off from the launch pad Tuesday morning in Van Horn, Texas. ![]() Jeff Bezos’ rocket company has suffered its first launch failure. Liftoff Jeff Bezos And 3 Crewmates Travel To Space And Back In Under 15 Minutes. The workers claim in an essay that there’s sexism at the Kent, Washington, company. This image provided by Blue Origin shows a rocket after a launch failure on Monday, Sept. So while space travel's environmental impact is currently believed to be relatively insignificant, there's reason to suspect that at current rates of the industry's growth, it's poised to become a massive polluter.(AP) - A group of more than 20 current and former employees are accusing Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket ship company of being a toxic work environment and not adhering to proper safety protocols. We can expect a lot more methane-powered launches in the future, in other words. In fact, methane is increasingly viewed as the ideal rocket fuel by space firms due to, among many factors, its high density, stellar performance, and cost efficiency. According to the International Energy Association, methane alone is responsible for nearly a third of the Earth's warming temperatures.īlue Origin emitting several dozen more tons of the stuff annually may not be that much in the grand scheme of things - globally, the energy industry released 135 million tons of the stuff in 2022 - but remains worth scrutinizing nonetheless.įor one, it is far from the only space firm to use methane as a rocket propellant - SpaceX and its troubled Starship is a notable example. Methane is a greenhouse gas and a significant driver of climate change. Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, launched and landed its small New Shepard. Even with Carbon Mapper's latest findings, we can't narrow down its emissions for sure, but an air permit application spotted by Bloomberg may help clue us in.Īccording to the document, filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2020) in 2020, Blue Origin estimates that it will emit around 3.4 million cubic feet of LNG per year, or roughly 60 tons of methane. On Tuesday, Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeffrey P. Until now, though, the Bezos venture's methane footprint has remained a relative unknown. "We frequently transfer LNG from our suppliers into storage tanks at our engine test stands," the spokesperson told Bloomberg. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, founded his rocket. And according to a company spokesperson, these emissions are par for the course. On July 20, another billionaire is scheduled to take another rocket to the edge of space. Its flagship rocket engine, the BE-4, uses what's known as liquefied natural gas (LNG) for propulsion, made almost entirely of methane. ![]() It's certainly no secret that methane figures into Blue Origin's plans. To space and back: Jeff Bezos and his crew successfully completed a spaceflight.They were flying on the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin. Without more data, there's no telling how long those emissions lasted. Using data gathered by an instrument on board the International Space Station, Carbon Mapper estimated that about 1.5 metric tons of methane were spewing out of the Blue Origin facility per hour, appearing as a conspicuous cloud on its website's map. The unexpected detection was made in June by Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that scans for greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. Things are getting kind of gassy at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space tourism firm.Ĭase in point, Bloomberg reports that a Blue Origin facility in West Texas is regularly emitting so much methane during recent rocket tests that plumes of the stuff are being spotted from space.
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