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On Saturday, future space tourists and members of the public got to see a rocket test happen... on Twitter.
Blue Origin -- the traditionally tight-lipped spaceflight company backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos -- announced on Friday that they would launch the third test of a rocket that has flown to suborbital space twice before.
On Saturday, instead of sending out a video and photos of the launch and reusable rocket test one day after it flew as they had before, Bezos live-tweeted the flight and landing, without photos or video footage.
Some have hailed this burgeoning transparency as a signal that Blue Origin is starting to feel more confident about their rockets and capsules.
SEE ALSO:Blue Origin rocket video shows smoothest return to Earth yetWhile this form of transparency may be a big step forward for Blue Origin, which has a history of announcing launches only after they happened, the company still has a long way to go before it is truly open.
Tweet may have been deleted
Instead of showing the public proof of the rocket landing and launch in real-time, Bezos tweeted about the test and expected everyone in the media and the public to take his word for it. (For the most part, we did.)
Photos of the launch weren’t released until about 9 hours after the test took place, and a full video of the event wasn’t released until a day after it occurred.
Tweet may have been deleted
Private companies like Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing and others are not obligated to release videos and photos of their tests or full-scale missions. And these firms -- along with private satellite operators like DigitalGlobe and Planet Labs -- are largely seen as the future of space.
Unlike NASA, private Earth-imaging companies aren’t compelled to release the high resolution images of the planet collected by the company’s hardware. Many of the images taken by these satellites are sold and never seen by the public at large.
Some awkward PR
Blue Origin’s opacity has already backfired on the company once.
In 2015, the company announced that they performed the first test flight of the New Shepard space vehicle, revealing a full photo of the rocket for the first time.
As soon as pictures of the rocket hit the internet, people started commenting on the fact that the space system looks like a certain part of the male anatomy.
Credit: Blue OriginIf Blue Origin had released photos prior to the test, as other companies have done, maybe space fans (including some at Mashable) wouldn’t have been commenting on the shape of the vehicle at the same time the company was trying to celebrate a milestone.
But guarded communication has been Blue Origin’s way since the beginning.
“You have companies like Blue [Origin] who take a much more conservative approach in their messaging and the expectations,” Commercial Spaceflight Federation president Eric Stallmer told Mashable.
“Now that’s changed a little bit. Now they’re a little more forthcoming with their information, and that’s great, but I think they were always cautiously optimistic or guardedly optimistic and wanted to wait until they had a product.”
Blue Origin rocket landing.Credit: Blue originBe open, be honest
Transparency isn’t a principle that private spaceflight companies should adhere to only when it’s convenient for them, though.
Eventually, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and others want to take people to suborbital space for a hefty sum of around $250,000 per person.
The lives of their customers are at stake, and the only way that potential explorers will be able to make an informed decision about which company to fly to space with is if those organizations are totally transparent about their testing programs.
If the minds running private spaceflight companies want to sell tickets, then they need to show that they can do what they are promising to do, and do it routinely and safely.
It may be that early adopters and spaceflight fanatics will climb aboard a craft sight unseen, but if Blue Origin wants to eventually contribute to a future where “millions of people” live and work in space -- as Bezos said last year -- then they will need to attract far more than just die-hard space fans.
One of the quickest ways to court a more diverse crowd is to increase trust through openness.
Transparency "shows to the consumer the steps that went into making their vehicle as reliable as it can be," Stallmer said.
“Simply put, people want to know what type of vehicle they or their payloads will be flying on. The safest, most reliable vehicles will be the vehicles that consumers choose.”
Space is hard
All companies and space agencies experience failures -- it’s the reason “space is hard” is the cliche that it is. For NASA as well as the private space companies, it’s how you handle failure that matters.
And things do wrong.
As an example, before Blue Origin successfully launched and landed this suborbital rocket stage three times, one of its rockets failed during landing. The capsule came back to Earth unscathed, but the reusable rocket wasn’t so lucky.
Footage of that launch and the landing of the capsule were released, but not footage of the rocket's fate. However, the company did make it clear that there had been a problem.
Rockets, by design, are built to function at the extreme limits of what humans are able to create, so they will experience failures, but you can’t write that part of a test program out of history.
SpaceX didn’t stick a landing of the booster stage of its Falcon 9 rocket until it landed back in Florida in 2015. The company attempted and failed to land the booster on drone ships in the ocean multiple times, releasing videos of the fiery mishaps after they happened.
In spite of those public failures, SpaceX is no less loved by the spaceflight community as a whole, and the company hasn’t shied away from public communication.
In fact, SpaceX has run headlong toward more transparency, live-streaming landing attempts on the drone ship since the successful Florida landing for anyone with an internet connection. In addition, the company has made all of its photographs available for public use via Creative Commons.
Virgin Galactic -- Richard Branson’s outfit that is aiming to fly a space tourists to suborbital space -- went through an extremely public and tragic failure in 2014 when the company’s SpaceShipTwo broke up in the sky above the Mojave, killing one pilot and seriously injuring the other.
Blue Origin's rocket landing.Credit: blue originAfter that accident, Virgin Galactic went through some soul searching, including an honest and open discussion of how the company’s culture has been affected by the accident. Today, the company appears to be stronger and more humble after going through that process in the public eye.
However, all of that openness could go away in the blink of an eye if private companies don't place a priority on it.
A time and place for secrecy
All this isn’t to say that private companies shouldn’t have their secrets.
SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and basically any other private spaceflight company have all secretly tested rocket engines or vehicles, and there is a place for that.
Working to fly again tomorrow. Same vehicle. Third time. #LaunchLandRepeat @BlueOrigin pic.twitter.com/e1ZfYAibK2
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 1, 2016
Sometimes a rocket or capsule isn’t ready for prime time and engineers need to test it out privately. Or maybe there’s a low chance of the test actually succeeding, but there are ways of informing the public of those things without sacrificing the good of the company.
It’s also not too late for Blue Origin to become more open in their communication. The company has clearly started taking steps toward giving the public more information about their launches and landings, so hopefully that trend continues.
Blue Origin is also at the very beginning of a rocket testing process that could take years, so it’s possible the company may just not be ready for full transparency. They could be planning to open up in the future, too.
However, the company isn’t exactly keen on talking with the media, so we don’t have any solid answers to those questions.
Blue Origin wouldn’t speak to Mashablefor this story, and they aren’t granting interviews at an upcoming space conference in Colorado, either.
Unapologetic transparency
It is possible for organizations to bake transparency into the fabric of their communications practices.
Take NASA, for instance.
The publicly-funded space agency has been committed to providing “information to the widest audience possible” since NASA was founded in 1958, agency spokesperson Rob Navias told Mashable.
NASA is not required by law to release the photos, videos and live streams of their launches, yet they do it anyway. The agency also uploads raw photos taken by their spacecraft and makes them available for public use.
Navias said: “It is not law, but is considered our service to the public that we take as if it were law.”
Let’s just hope that all private spaceflight companies start seeing it that way soon.
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