Bezos, Musk rockets tested in Sandusky

SANDUSKY — Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk — two billionaires you've probably heard of — have something in common besides the fact they are trying to help humanity migrate into space: Both have carried out testing for their spacecraft at the Neil Armstrong Test Facility in Erie County. While the test facility has carried out testing for many space missions launched by NASA, including a key role in the successful Mars lander missions, it also has carried out tests for Bezos' Blue Origin rocket company and for Musk's SpaceX venture. The most recent testing was carried out for Blue Origin. Bezos, 58, the founder of Amazon.com and the owner of the Washington Post newspaper, founded Blue Origin in 2000. Bezos had expressed interest in space travel in a newspaper interview when he was 18, and he founded his rocket company after having conversations about the matter with science fiction author Neal Stephenson. Blue Origin has flown people into space, including "Star Trek" star William Shatner, and is working on a project, Blue Moon, to deliver cargo to the Moon. The company suffered a setback on Sept. 12 in west Texas when its New Shepherd suborbital booster rocket failed during an attempted launch of scientific instruments. The capsule, which on that flight did not carry any people, was able to fire its launch abort motor and parachuted safety to a landing. Testing for Blue Origin carried out in May at the Space Environments Complex at the Armstrong Test Facility was for a new Blue Origin rocket, the New Glenn, named after Ohio astronaut John Glenn. The New Glenn is planned as a heavy-lift orbital launch vehicle. The first test flight could come as early as January with a planned launch at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Space Environments Complex, which can replicate conditions during launch and in outer space, includes the world's largest indoor vacuum chamber. It was used in May to test fairing separation testing for the New Glenn. "A payload fairing is a nose cone used to protect a spacecraft payload against the impact of dynamic pressure and aerodynamic heating during launch," NASA officials explained in a statement issued last month. During August, large components of the New Glenn were transported away from the Armstrong Test Facility. Large vehicles carried them to the Huron docks. Blue Origin did not respond to a media inquiry from the Register about whether company officials thought testing went well at the Armstrong Test Facility and whether the company plans to return to Armstrong for further testing. Blue Origin says that later in the current decade, it wants to open a space business park in Earth orbit called Orbital Reef. The aim of Orbital Reef is to "open multiple new markets in space" and "provide anyone with the opportunity to establish their own address on orbit." NASA says that several tests for SpaceX, the Elon Musk rocket company, have been carried out at the Armstrong Test Facility. In 2013, SpaceX carried out testing at Armstrong for its Falcon 9 rocket. The Falcon 9 rocket has been used multiple times and is the first commercial rocket to put an all-private crew into Earth orbit. The 2013 test used both the Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility (which generates a huge amount of noise) and the indoor vacuum chamber to test the fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket, according to a NASA news release. In 2018, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, a space capsule used for carrying people into space, also was tested at Armstrong. The Crew Dragon has been used to carry astronauts to the International Space Station. SpaceX has said its ultimate goal is to reduce the costs of space travel so that a colony from Earth can be set up on Mars. A gift shop at the SpaceX website includes T-shirts that say, "Occupy Mars." A spokeswoman for the SpaceX company, Emily Shanklin, did not respond to an email asking if the company plans any additional testing at Armstrong Test Facility. In addition to carrying out tests for private rocket companies, Armstrong has done tests for space agencies in addition to NASA. Fairing separation tests were carried out in 2012 for the Ariane rocket, which is operated by the European Space Agency.