Blue Origin’s Original Charon Flying Vehicle
A new exhibit opens today at The Museum of Flight in Seattle that features Blue Origin’s first flying vehicle, Charon. Built as an early development project in 2005, Blue Origin has loaned the vertical take-off, vertical-landing jet-powered vehicle to the Museum.
Charon will be on display in the new Charles Simonyi Space Gallery on the west side of the Museum of Flight campus, accompanied by the NASA Full-Fuselage Space Shuttle Trainer and the TMA-14 Soyuz space capsule.
“We are proud to share this piece of our company history with The Museum of Flight,” said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. “By making the original Charon vehicle available for public viewing, we hope to educate and inspire the next generation of aerospace explorers.”
Charon is a 9,500-pound test vehicle that used four, vertically mounted aircraft jet engines to demonstrate vertical-landing technologies. The vehicle was flown in early 2005 and provided valuable design, build, and operations experience to the Blue Origin team.
“Blue Origin is making incredible strides in bringing commercial space travel to fruition,” said Douglas King, president and CEO of The Museum of Flight. “Charon is an exciting addition to our extensive collection of historically significant air- and spacecraft. The fact that it comes from a company in our home town makes it even more prestigious.”
About Blue Origin
Blue Origin, LLC (Blue Origin) is a private company developing vehicles and technologies to enable commercial human space transportation. The company has a long-term vision of greatly increasing the number of people that fly into space through low-cost, highly reliable commercial space transportation. For more information and a list of job openings, visit www.blueorigin.com.
About The Museum of Flight
The non-profit Museum of Flight is one of the largest independent air and space museums in the world. The Museum’s collection includes more than 150 historically significant air- and spacecraft, as well as the William E. Boeing Red Barn(R) – the original manufacturing facility of the Boeing Co. The Airpark includes outdoor displays with the first jet Air Force One, a Concorde airliner, and the first Boeing 747 jumbo jet. The Museum aeronautical library and archival holdings are the largest on the West Coast. The Education Office offers weekend family programs, programs for students and educators, and overnight camps for children. McCormick & Schmick’s Wings Cafe is on site. For general Museum information, please call 206-764-5720 or visit museumofflight.org.
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Gwen Griffin & Brooke Crawford
Griffin Communications Group
gwen@griffincg.com; brooke@griffincg.com
Mike Bush
Museum of Flight
(253) 307-3225 MBush@museumofflight.org
