http://news.yahoo.com/jeff-bezos-spa...224354954.html
VAN HORN, Texas (AP) — An unmanned spacecraft bankrolled by Amazon.com Inc. CEO Jeff Bezos failed during a recent test flight.
The vehicle became unstable at 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) and ground controllers had to terminate it as a precaution. Additional details about what went wrong were not released.
Bezos founded Blue Origin to develop a vertical takeoff and landing rocketship that would fly passengers to suborbital space. It recently won money from NASA to compete to go into orbit as a space taxi now that the space shuttle fleet is retired.
The mishap occurred during a test flight last week from Blue Origin's West Texas spaceport. The ultra-secretive company notified the Federal Aviation Administration about the launch and only acknowledged the accident publicly on Friday.The Wall Street Journal, which first reported about the failure, said the test did not use federal funds and was not part of the development agreement with NASA.
Blue Origin's failure shines a spotlight on the risks of commercial space ventures.....snip~
Looks Like Not only have we phased out much of NASA but it looks like the private sector is still having difficulties. They won money from NASA to compete in being a space taxi. But even Virgin Galactic has had a problem with one of his test vehicles blowing up and killing 3 pilots. Don't know if we should call them Astronauts tho. Can't we still stick with cabbies?