Jeff Bezos is aiming to rival Elon Musk when it comes to launching giant metal shafts into orbit and bringing them back down again.
The billionaire’s private space company, Blue Origin, has successfully launched and landed its New Shepherd rocket ship.
This latest attempt is the ship’s seventh consecutive flight and therefore breaks the record for the most reused spacecraft.
New Shepherd launched at 9:35am ET, carrying 12 commercial payloads that it took into orbit and returned to for a successful landing about 10 minutes following liftoff.
Despite the incredible engineering achievement, many onlookers were more intrigued with the rather phallic design of Bezos’ space-faring vehicle.
‘Woot! Successful launch of Bezos’ space penis- Blue Origin New Shepherd rocket! They were able 2 successfully deploy “just the tip,’ wrote Vonetta Logan on Twitter.
Others had the same thought.
You get the idea.
To further demonstrate the futuristic credentials of the space penis, Blue Origin revealed the compartment at the tip of the rocket that astronauts (and paying tourists) will one day travel inside.
The capsule is designed to carry up to six passengers, who will float in zero gravity for 10 minutes while taking in the views at some 340,000 feet above Earth’s surface.
Blue Origin hasn’t yet said how much it’ll cost to ride the rocket into space. But the seats recline fully and the capsule is fitted with the largest windows to ever travel into space.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and established the launch facility in West Texas in 2015. The name New Shepherd comes from Alan Shepherd, the first American to travel into space back in 1961.
