Nasa Bill Lane Talks Blue Origin Commercial Crew Program Milestone Efforts In 2012

NASA Public Affairs Officer Kyle Herring interviews Bill Lane, Commercial Crew Partner Manager for BLUE ORIGIN.

BLUE is a privately funded aerospace company set up by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. The company was awarded 3.7 million in funding in 2009 by NASA via a Space Act Agreement under the COMMERCIAL CREW DEVELOPMENT (CCDev) program for development of concepts and technologies to support future human spaceflight operations.

In April 2011, Blue Origin received a commitment from NASA for 22 million of funding under the CCDev phase 2 program. The NASA funds are intended to accelerate development of a manned orbital spacecraft (Space Vehicle) and launch escape technology which can be used for New Shepard and the Space Vehicle, with substantial additional development funding expected to be provided by Blue founder Bezos.

The funds will also be used to accelerate the development and testing of the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine for the Reusable Booster System which will be used in a later phase to launch the Space Vehicle to orbit (the first flights of the Space Vehicle will use the ATLAS V rocket).