In a new e-mail update from company founder Jeff Bezos on Thursday morning, Blue Origin detailed plans for the next flight of its reusable New Shepard propulsion module and capsule—a dramatic, in-flight test of the escape system. Such an escape system is added to the spacecraft so that, in the event of a rocket failure, the capsule can get away quickly to protect the passengers inside.

For the New Shepard system, this escape motor is mounted underneath the capsule and will fire in case of emergency to push the spacecraft away from the rocket. Traditionally, such launch abort systems have been mounted above the capsule in the "stack," meaning they are expended during each flight, whether used or not. But Blue Origin is seeking a fully reusable launch system, so it is embedding the escape motor below the capsule so that it is not thrown off during the flight.

Blue Origin is not the first to try this "beneath" mounting. NASA, for example, experimented with it in the Max Launch Abort System nearly a decade ago, but the space agency ultimately stuck with a more traditional launch abort system for its Orion spacecraft. Blue Origin, therefore, is the first company or space agency to bring such an escape system this far into development and through multiple tests.

According to Bezos, the company has tested this escape system in multiple ground tests and on the launch pad. But now the company plans to conduct the first in-flight tests of an escape system since the mid-1960s and the Apollo program. And it will do so at so-called "Max Q," the point of maximum dynamic pressure when the rocket is moving through the lower atmosphere at transonic velocities.

"We’ll be doing our in-flight escape test with the same reusable New Shepard booster that we’ve already flown four times," Bezos wrote. "About 45 seconds after liftoff at about 16,000 feet, we’ll intentionally command escape. Redundant separation systems will sever the crew capsule from the booster at the same time we ignite the escape motor. The escape motor will vector thrust to steer the capsule to the side, out of the booster’s path. The high acceleration portion of the escape lasts less than two seconds, but by then the capsule will be hundreds of feet away and diverging quickly. It will traverse twice through transonic velocities—the most difficult control region—during the acceleration burn and subsequent deceleration. The capsule will then coast, stabilized by reaction control thrusters, until it starts descending."

If all goes well, the capsule will make a normal descent under three drogue parachutes, and then its main parachutes, to the ground. And the booster? It may not fare so well. It was not designed to survive an in-flight escape, Bezos noted, as it will be slammed with 70,000 pounds of off-axis force and hot exhaust. At Max-Q it is not clear whether the propulsion module will survive—in some Monte Carlo simulations it does, but in others it does not.

"If the booster does manage to survive this flight—its fifth—we will in fact reward it for its service with a retirement party and put it in a museum," Bezos wrote. "In the more likely event that we end up sacrificing the booster in service of this test, it will still have most of its propellant on board at the time escape is triggered, and its impact with the desert floor will be most impressive."

The test flight is due to occur in "early October," and as part of Blue Origin's increasing openness, the company will again offer a full webcast of the proceedings. The test is part of the company's plan to ensure the robustness of its New Shepard launch system, a fully automated rocket and capsule that Blue Origin plans to use to ferry space tourists into suborbital space, possibly as early as 2018. Blue Origin will also use the reusable technologies in this vehicle as part of a larger, orbital rocket likely to fly by the end of the decade.

Listing image by Blue Origin