In the past, billionaires like Howard Hughes had to be content with just flying or funding aviation projects like the Spruce Goose but the Wall Street Journal has recently reported that an unmanned spacecraft funded by Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos had just suffered a catastrophic failure during a test flight. Specifically, Bezos noted in a brief online post on Friday that "we lost the vehicle" at 45,000 feet.
It should be noted that Bezos had founded Blue Origin in order to develop a vertical takeoff and landing rocketship that can take passengers into suborbital space. Moreover, the firm recently won money from NASA in order to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi service after the recent retirement of the space shuttle fleet.
However and in this short Wall Street Journal video, Andy Pasztor discuss the failure of Bezos’ spacecraft along with some of the risks associated with private space ventures that will be replacing NASA’s space shuttle: