Breaking Aerospace News – DATELINE: Wednesday, October 5, 2016; Portland Oregon from FASF Aerospace Scout Eric Lambart . . . The below 10 minute video by Blue Origin, has a completely narrated dialogue, so please remember to turn up your volume control in order to fully comprehend what you see.

SpaceX isn’t the only private company interested in reusable rockets. Blue Origin, an American privately-funded aerospace manufacturer established by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, surprised everyone, including itself, by successfully landing its New Shepard rocket in today’s in-flight launch escape test. Gizmodo reports:

Moments ago, Blue Origin conducted an in flight test of its launch escape system, separating a crew capsule from its New Shepard booster at an altitude of 16,000 feet. This test was critical to ensure that the rocket will be safe for human passengers, whom Blue Origin hopes to start flying into sub-orbital space as early as next year. Not only did the crew capsule make a clean separation, deploy its parachutes, and land softly in a small cloud of dust back West Texas, but the booster – which people expected might go splat – continued on its merry way into suborbital space, after which it succeeded in landing smoothly back on Earth – – – for a fifth time!

Although Blue Origin has tested its launch escape system on the launchpad before, this is the first time such a system has been tested, by anyone, in flight since the 1960s. It was almost too perfect.  Many of us remember the numerous catastrophes experienced by NASA during its many launches years ago, but this is not your government achieving all of these stellar goals at colossal taxpayer expense, and so spectacularly, but the American Private Sector.

Blue Origin’s launch and recovery, yesterday, took place only two hours East of El Paso, TX, in Van Horn, TX, a small West Texas town only three hour’s drive from Columbus, NM, the HQ of the First Aero Squadron.