It's hard to keep rocket launches under wraps. SpaceNews is reporting that someone has filed a temporary flight restriction with the Federal Aviation Administration.
This flight restriction has something to do with “space flight operations,” and it will divert air traffic away from an area of Texas that just so happens to coincide with Blue Origin's test area. The restriction is to take place between 8 am and 4 pm Eastern on Friday and Saturday this week.
Unlike NASA and SpaceX, who livestream all their major events, Blue Origin prefers to keep things private. In December, the company (created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos) launched and landed a rocket, making history without so much as a heads-up to the general public, let alone a livestream. They did come out with a handy PR video after the fact, though:
And although the company hopes to avoid making a spectacle, they can't keep all of their activities quiet--especially when something goes wrong, like in the September 2011 explosion of an unmanned Blue Origin spaceship.
Blue Origin hopes to one day carry human tourists into orbit. The company previously announced its intentions to re-fly the booster, but said that test flight was several weeks away. Could this be the test they were hinting at? Wouldn't we like to know.
[Via SpaceNews]
