September 5, 2011 11:11 pm EDT

Amazon CEO's flying water tank crashes, leaves dent in his space travel dream

In a moment of profound candidness, Amazon billionnaire Jeff Bezos has revealed that the mid-air failure of his unmanned spaceship 11 days ago was "not the outcome any of us wanted." The searing truth of his statement is certainly borne out by the fact that NASA has poured millions of dollars of funding into Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, in the hope that it will one day ferry people to the ISS and replace the scuttled shuttle program. Indeed, Blue Origin's latest craft looked every inch a shuttle-beater until it suddenly went beserk at 45,000 feet, forcing the Asimovian onboard computer to cut power and nose dive into the ground in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. Not an ideal result, to be sure, but Jeff is hardly likely to give up on his starry ambitions -- everybody knows he has a thing for thrusters.

Amazon CEO's flying water tank crashes, leaves dent in his space travel dream originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Sep 2011 19:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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