This is CBS. I am the world. I'm John Bachelors. Behind the Black, Bob Zimmerman keeps the

website watching very carefully commercial space and big space. We now speak to a veteran

of big space who has been leading one of the major well-funded members of commercial

space, Blue Origin. And now, Bob, who is Bob Smith and what's happened at Blue Origin?

Good evening, too.

Good evening, John. Bob Smith was hired by Jeff Bezos back in 2017. And Bezos was on

to did the hiring and did the vetting. He hired him back in 2017 to take over Blue Origin

to get that company into the air or to orbit into space, actually. At the time, Blue

Origin was testing almost monthly its new-shepard suborbital reusable ship. And in fact, had

successfully vertically landed it, ahead of SpaceX is Falcon 9 rocket-first vertical landing.

Now, it's a suborbital craft, but it's intended for short hops of tourism. But nonetheless,

they had managed a vertical landing and they were testing it almost monthly. And then

Bob Smith took over. And then nothing happened. And then suddenly everything stopped.

Not only did Blue Origin stop testing new-shepard for years, it was then almost four years

plus, I'm sorry, six years plus before they finally did a commercial flight. Six years,

even though they're testing it monthly in 16, new Glenn, their orbital rocket, which

is supposed to launch in 20, three years after Smith took over, has still not launched

now as we move towards the fourth quarter of 23. It's four years behind schedule. And

along the way, while Bob Smith is in charge, there were problems with the BE4 engine that's

used as the first stage engine for both a new Glenn, as well as ULA's Vulcan-new rocket,

new Vulcan rocket. And that BE4 engine, there are apparently problems and suddenly development

of its load to almost a crawl for four years. There's almost no testing it seemed. Nothing

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