The tech billionaire space race is heating up, and as Elon Musk reaches for Mars with SpaceX, the world's second-richest man is doing his own thing.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is the man behind Blue Origin, which was supposed to launch the partially reusable New Glenn rocket into orbit for the first time.
Although Blue Origin hopes to rival SpaceX's private space launch, it's trailing behind its competitor.
Despite Elon Musk's closeness to President-elect Donald Trump, Bezos has said he doesn't think it'll lead to SpaceX having an unfair advantage. Bezos and Musk might've had beef in the past, but before the New Glenn launch, the latter wished his tech rival 'good luck'.
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Unfortunately, this might've cursed Blue Origin's launch.
Bezos' rocket stands at a whopping 30 stories tall and was supposed to launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 1:00 am ET on January 13.
Unfortunately, it was called off just six minutes before launch, with 'anomalies' being blamed. After being loaded with methane and liquid oxygen propellants, there was confusion when the 10-minute countdown was delayed to 35 minutes. Even as teams hurried around on the ground, Blue Origin eventually said the launch would be postponed due to a 'vehicle subsystem issue'.
Blue Origin said: "We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window. We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."
As reported by Ars Technica, Bezos referred to the rocket launch as 'insane' the night before its proposed takeoff. Discussing the rocket, Bezos said: "We would certainly like to achieve orbit, and get the Blue Ring Pathfinder into orbit.
"Landing the booster would be gravy on top of that. It's kind of insane to try and land the booster. A more sane approach would probably be to try to land it into ocean. But we're gonna go for it."
Admitting he was 'worried' about the launch, Bezos added: "We've done a lot of work, we've done a lot of testing, but there are some things that can only be tested in flight. And you can't be overconfident in these things. You have to be real.
"The reality is, there are a lot of things that go wrong, and you have to accept that, if something goes wrong, we'll pick ourselves up and get busy for the second flight."
Sadly, neither was achieved by Blue Origin.
The delay could be for as little as 24 hours but is expected to be longer due to the stakes of the mission.
This launch is the culmination of over a decade of work and billions of dollars. When it eventually takes off, the rocket hopes to land New Glenn's first stage booster on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean within 10 minutes, with the rocket's second stage heading into orbit.
Inside the payload is payload bay is a prototype for Blue Origin's Blue Ring vehicle. Blue Origin hopes to sell the maneuverable spacecraft to the Pentagon and others for missions of national security and to service satellites.
New Glenn's development has been through three Blue Origin CEOs, but more recently, Bezos has prioritized its development under Amazon veteran Dave Limp.
Bezos wanted to compete with SpaceX, with New Glenn tipped to be twice as powerful as its rival’s Falcon 9 rocket. The reusable Falcon 9 is the world's most active rocket, and while New Glenn is yet to get off the ground, Blue Origin is hot on the heels of SpaceX.