Between SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, powered rocket landings are becoming almost commonplace. Last month, the latter's New Shepard rocket touched down for the third time in a row, and the company has now offered us a fresh (and pretty awesome) perspective from the side of the booster as it returned to Earth.
The recent flight and landing of the reusable New Shepard rocket was intended to test the ability of its engines to restart quickly at high thrust. On April 2 it flew to an altitude of 339,178 ft (103 km) and releasing its unmanned Crew Capsule, which returned to Earth using parachutes, before re-entering the atmosphere and plummeting down itself.
Had the engines failed to fire, gravity would have brought the rocket crashing to the ground within six seconds. But at 3,600 ft (1,100 m) they kicked into action and steadily guided the craft down to safety. Bezos described the rocket's performance as flawless, and nothing in the video shot from just below its ring fin seems to suggest otherwise.
You can check out the clip below.
Source: YouTube
This seems an awfully large risk to take for 4 minutes of weightlessness at the technical edge of space. The capsule would have to be very crowded, about 60-80% of the passengers and crew would vomit. And all for the bargain price of $250,000. For that price a person could buy two Tesla Model S's and two Model 3's.