Bet you've never seen a space rocket do THIS!

'New Shepherd' rocket flies to space and LANDS safely on Earth.

In a technological upset, Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos has successfully tested a reusable rocket by flying it into space and landing it back on Earth. The test puts Bezo's Blue Origin ahead of Elon Musk's Space X in the race to develop a reusable rocket.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Jeff Bezos has successfully flown a rocket into space and landed it back on the ground, stealing the lead in a private space race to develop a reusable rocket. The previous leader, Elon Musk, developed the Falcon rocket which he has tried, unsuccessfully, to land on a special barge.

Bezos' company, Blue Origin, is a secretive private space company that is seeking to find a cheaper way to get people and material into space. In a time of declining NASA budgets, it will be private spaceflight firms that will handle the bulk of space travel.

But before private firms can take the lead from NASA, they first need to develop cost effective technologies that are reliable enough to fly people. Spaceflight leaves no margin for error, and even a tiny design flaw, mistake, or unexpected change can lead to the destruction of millions of dollars' worth of equipment.

Perhaps more troubling is that even when spaceflight goes right, it is still incredibly expensive.

Rockets have long been used to fly people and material into space, but they use a staging system that discards boosters as the rocket ascends. This is a compromise that is expensive because the boosters are lost in the process. NASA attempted to solve the problem with a reusable space vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And while the shuttle was cheaper to operate, it was also complex and that complexity contributed to risk. Now, NASA is returning to rockets.

In the private world, pioneering minds such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, among many others, have suggested there could be a better way. If the simplicity of a rocket could be combined with the re-usability of a space shuttle, then an affordable launch system could be developed. Although the race to develop such a system has stretched decades, it has only now come to fruition.

Bezos' rocket is called the "New Shepherd" and it flew from a West Texas launch site to a height of 60 miles, widely considered to be the edge of space. The rocket then made a controlled descent back to its launch pad. Nearing the ground, its engines reignited and it settled softly on four legs, no worse for the wear except for some scorched paint at the bottom.

Elon Musk has been attempting this same feat, but each launch has failed. But despite the failures, the missions still provide valuable information that will ensure later success.

Bezos' success now makes him the leader ahead of Musk. But the successful test is just the beginning of many more such flights to perfect and develop the technology so people can also fly in these machines and make spaceflight a routine part of our future.

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