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Dragonslayer (1981 film)

Dragonslayer is a 1981 American dark fantasy film directed by Matthew Robbins from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hal Barwood. It stars Peter MacNicol, Ralph Richardson, John Hallam, and Caitlin Clarke. It was a co-production between Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions, where Paramount handled North American distribution and Disney handled international distribution through Buena Vista International. The story is set in a fictional medieval kingdom where a young wizard encounters challenges as he hunts a dragon, Vermithrax Pejorative.

It is the second joint production between Paramount and Disney, after Popeye (1980), and is more mature than most contemporary Disney films. Because the audience expected the film be solely children's entertainment, the violence, adult themes and brief nudity were somewhat controversial, though Disney did not hold the North American distribution rights. The film was rated PG in the U.S.

The special effects were created at Industrial Light and Magic, the first use of ILM outside of a Lucasfilm production. Phil Tippett had co-developed an animation technique there for The Empire Strikes Back (1980) called go motion, a variation on stop motion. This led to the film's nomination for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, but it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark, the only other visual effects nominee that year, whose special effects were also provided by ILM. Including the hydraulic 40 ft model, the dragon consists of 16 puppets dedicated to flying, crawling, or breathing fire.

The film received generally positive reviews from critics, but it performed poorly at the box office, grossing $14.1 million worldwide against a production budget of $18 million. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score, which went to Chariots of Fire. It was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, again given to Raiders of the Lost Ark. On October 21, 2003, Dragonslayer was released on DVD in the U.S. by Paramount Home Entertainment. The film was re-released in remastered format on Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on March 21, 2023, in the U.S. by Paramount Home Entertainment.

Plot
Urland, a sixth-century post-Roman kingdom situated near the River Ur, is being terrorized by Vermithrax Pejorative, a 400-year-old dragon. To appease the creature, King Casiodorus offers it virgin girls selected by lottery twice a year. An expedition led by a young man named Valerian seeks help from the last sorcerer, Ulrich of Cragganmore.

The expedition is followed by Tyrian, the brutal and cynical captain of Casiodorus's Royal Guard. His lieutenant Jerbul and he openly intimidate the wizard, doubtful of his abilities. Ulrich invites Tyrian to stab him to prove his magical powers. Tyrian does so and Ulrich dies instantly, to the horror of his young apprentice Galen Bradwarden and his elderly servant Hodge, who cremates Ulrich's body and places the ashes in a leather pouch.

Galen is selected by the wizard's magical amulet as its next owner; encouraged, he journeys to Urland. On the way, he discovers Valerian is a young woman, who is disguised to avoid being selected in the lottery. In an effort to discourage the expedition, Tyrian kills Hodge. Just before dying, Hodge hands Galen Ulrich's ashes and informs Galen that Ulrich wanted them spread over a lake of burning water.

Arriving in Urland, Galen inspects the dragon's lair and magically seals its entrance with a rockslide. Tyrian apprehends Galen and takes him to Castle Morgenthorme, from which King Casiodorus governs Urland. Casiodorus disputes that Galen is a real wizard and complains that his attack may have angered the dragon instead of killing it, as his brother and predecessor once did. The king confiscates the amulet and imprisons Galen. His daughter, Princess Elspeth, visits Galen and is shocked when he informs her of rumors that the lottery is rigged; it excludes her name and those others whose families are rich enough to bribe the king into disqualifying their children. Her father is unable to lie convincingly when she confronts him over this.

Meanwhile, the dragon frees itself from its prison, causing an earthquake. Galen narrowly escapes from his prison, but without the amulet. The village priest, Brother Jacopus, leads his congregation to confront the dragon, denouncing it as the Devil. The dragon incinerates him and then heads for the village of Swanscombe, burning all in its path.

When the lottery begins anew to placate it, Elspeth rigs the draw so that only her name can be chosen. Desperate, King Casiodorus returns the amulet to Galen so that he might save Elspeth. Galen uses the amulet to enchant a heavy spear (forged by Valerian's father and dubbed Sicarius Dracorum, or "Dragonslayer") with the ability to pierce the dragon's armored hide. Valerian gathers some molted dragon scales to create a shield for Galen. Valerian laments that, her cross-dressing disguise now blown, she will be eligible for the lottery since she is still a virgin, and that Galen has fallen in love with Princess Elspeth. Galen admits he has fallen in love, but with Valerian, not Elspeth. The couple kisses, realizing their romantic feelings for each other.

Attempting to rescue Elspeth, Galen fights and kills Tyrian. The princess, however, is determined to make amends for all the girls whose names have been chosen in the past; she descends into the dragon's cave and to her death. Galen follows her and finds a brood of young dragons feasting on her corpse. He slays them and goes on to find Vermithrax resting within an underground lake of fire. He manages to wound the great dragon, but the spear's wooden shaft is broken in the battle. Only Valerian's shield saves him from incineration.

After his failure to kill Vermithrax, Valerian convinces Galen to leave Swanscombe with her. As both prepare to depart, the amulet gives Galen a vision of the "burning water" within the dragon's cave. Galen realizes that Ulrich had planned his own death and cremation, being too old and frail to make the journey himself.

Galen returns to the cave with the pouch. When he spreads the ashes over the fiery lake, the wizard is resurrected within the flames. Ulrich reveals that his time is short, and that Galen must destroy the amulet "when the time is right". The wizard then transports himself to a mountaintop, where he summons a storm and confronts Vermithrax. After a brief battle, the monster snatches the old man and flies away with him. Cued by Ulrich, Galen crushes the amulet with a rock. The wizard's body explodes and kills the dragon, whose corpse falls from the sky.

In the aftermath, villagers inspecting the dragon's corpse credit God with the victory. The king arrives and drives a sword into the dragon to claim the glory for himself. As Galen and Valerian leave Urland together, he confesses that he misses both Ulrich and the amulet. He says, "I just wish we had a horse." Suddenly, a white horse appears, insinuating that the power of the amulet is now within Galen himself. The couple mount the horse and ride away.

Cast

 * Peter MacNicol as Galen Brandwardyn
 * Caitlin Clarke as Valerian
 * Ralph Richardson as Ulrich of Cragganmore
 * John Hallam as Tyrian
 * Peter Eyre as King Casiodorus Ulfilas
 * Albert Salmi as Greil (dubbed by Norman Rodway)
 * Sydney Bromley as Hodge
 * Chloe Salaman as Princess Elspeth Ulfilas
 * Emrys James as Simon (Valerian's Father)
 * Roger Kemp as Horsrick, Casiodorus's Chamberlain
 * Ian McDiarmid as Brother Jacopus

Conception
According to Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins and he got the inspiration for Dragonslayer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice sequence in Fantasia. They later came up with a story after researching St. George and the Dragon. Barwood and Robbins rejected the traditional conceptions of the medieval world to give the film more realism: "Our film has no knights in shining armor, no pennants streaming in the breeze, no delicate ladies with diaphanous veils waving from turreted castles, no courtly love, no holy grail. Instead, they set out to create a very strange world with a lot of weird values and customs, steeped in superstition, where the clothes and manners of the people were rough, their homes and villages primitive, and their countryside almost primeval, so that the idea of magic would be a natural part of their existence." For this reason, they chose to set the film after the end of Roman rule in Britain, prior to the arrival of Christianity. Barwood and Robins began to hastily work on the story outline on June 25, 1979, and completed it in early August. They received numerous refusals from various film studios, due to their inexperience in budget negotiations. The screenplay was eventually accepted by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures, becoming the two studios' second joint effort after Popeye (1980).

Dragon
About 25% of the film's budget went into the dragon's special effects. Graphic artist David Bunnett was assigned to design the look, and was fed ideas on the movement mechanics, and then rendered the concepts on paper. They decided early to emphasize flying, because the most important sequence is the final battle. Bunnett gave it a degree of personality, deliberately trying to avoid the creature from Alien, which he believed was "too hideous to look at". After Bunnett handed his storyboard panels to the film crew, the dragon design used a wide variety of techniques. The final creature is a composite of several different models. Phil Tippett of ILM finalized the design, and sculpted a reference model, which Danny Lee of Disney Studios closely followed in constructing the larger dragon props for close-up shots. Two months later, Lee's team finished a 16-foot head and neck assembly, a 30-foot tail, thighs, legs, claws capable of grabbing a man, and a 30 ft wing section. The parts were flown to Pinewood Studios outside London in the cargo hold of a Boeing 747.

Brian Johnson was hired to supervise the special effects, and began planning on- and off-set effects with various specialists. Dennis Muren, the effects cameraman, stated, "We knew the dragon had a lot more importance to this film than some of the incidental things that appeared in only a few shots in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back. The dragon had to be presented in a way that the audience would be absolutely stunned."

After the completion of principal shooting, a special-effects team of 80 people at ILM studios in northern California worked eight months in producing 160 composite shots of the dragon. Chris Walas sculpted and operated the dragon head used for close-up shots. The head measured 8 ft in length. The model was animated by a combination of radio controls, cable controls, air bladders, levers, and by hand—thus giving the illusion of a fully coordinated face with a wide range of expressions. Real World War II-era flamethrowers were used for the dragon's fire-breathing effects. The animals used for the dragon's vocalizations included lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, alligators, pigs, camels, and elephants.

Phil Tippett built a model for the dragon's walking scenes. He did not want to use standard stop-motion animation techniques, and had his team build a dragon model that would move during each exposure, rather than in between, as was once the standard. This process, named "go motion" by Tippett, was tested with motion control in The Empire Strikes Back. To make the motion even smoother, they decided to use a motorized rod puppet with a computer program that recorded the creature's movements in motion as a real animal would move, which added motion blur and removed the jerkiness common in prior stop-motion films.

Ken Ralston was assigned to the flying scenes. He built a model with an articulated aluminum skeleton for a wide range of motion. Ralston shot films of birds flying to incorporate their movements into the model. As with the walking dragon, the flying model was filmed using go-motion techniques. The camera was programmed to tilt and move at various angles to convey the sensation of flight.

Casting
Peter MacNicol first met Robbins in the office of casting director, Debby Brown, who had seen MacNicol's work as Benvolio in Romeo and Juliet at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. She had left a note backstage for him, encouraging him to move to New York, saying, "he would do well there". He took her advice. On his first day in New York City, MacNicol stopped by Brown's office to tell her he was now a Manhattan resident. While there, he heard the loud voices of actors coming from Brown's audition room. He asked Brown if anything right for him was in the project. She responded with a smile, "Well...actually, there is." An hour later, MacNicol was the front runner for the role of Galen. He was flown to England along with Caitlin Clarke for a screen test. Within a day or two, Paramount and Disney had said yes, and he was renting a flat in Chelsea. MacNicol had grown up riding horses—his first paid job was on a ranch near Arlington, Texas—so the young actor knew how to ride, even jump hurdles without a saddle, but during his pre-filming, he needed to learn to ride the type of trooper-style saddle they were using in the movie. Because he would have to ride on camera during action sequences, his riding skills had to be stress-tested. "They took away my stirrups, they took away my reins and whipped the horse, and then they told me to windmill my arms and turn a complete circle in the saddle. Then, they took away the saddle!" The young actor had already worked for two years in classical repertory theater and was highly trained in voice production. Nevertheless, a voice coach was hired to achieve the mid-Atlantic sound the role required. Having studied stage combat at the University of Minnesota (two years of classes in tumbling, foil, saber, rapier, and dagger), he was eager to do as much of the fighting as they would allow. The role also required some juggling and magic tricks. For this, he was mentored by British prestidigitator Harold Taylor, who had previously performed for the British royal family.

Caitlin Clarke was initially hesitant to involve herself in the film, as she was preparing to audition for a play in Chicago. Her agent insisted, though, and after doing an audition tape, was called back for more tests. Clarke failed them but managed to pass after doing another test at Robbins's insistence. She got along well with Ralph Richardson and stated that he taught her more in one rehearsal than she had learned in years of acting classes.

Set design
Elliot Scott was hired to design the sets of the film's sixth-century world. He temporarily converted the 13th-century Dolwyddelan Castle into Ulrich's ramshackle sixth-century fortress, to the surprise of the locals. He built the entire village of Swanscombe on a farm outside London. Although Scott extensively researched medieval architecture in the British Museum and his own library, he took some artistic liberties in creating the thatched-roof houses, the granary, Simon's house and smithy, and Casiodorus's castle, because he was unable to find enough information on their exact look. He built the interior of the dragon's lair, using 25000 cuft of polystyrene and 40 tons of Welsh slate and shale. The shots of the Welsh and Scottish landscapes were extended through the use of over three dozen matte paintings.

Nearly all of the outdoor scenes were shot in North Wales. The final scene was shot in Skye, Scotland.

Costumes
The costumes were designed by Anthony Mendelson, who consulted the British Museum, the London Library, and his own reference files to evoke the designs of the early Middle Ages. They are roughly stitched and use colors that would have been possible with the vegetable dyes of the time. The costumes of Casiodorus and his court were designed of fine silk, as opposed to the coarsely woven clothes of the Urlanders.

Music
The film's Academy Award-nominated score was composed by Alex North. The score's linear conception was developed through transparently layered and polyphonic orchestral texture, dominated by a medieval-style modal harmony. It was largely based on five major thematic concepts:
 * 1) The suffering of the Urlanders
 * 2) A "magic" motif
 * 3) The amulet
 * 4) The sacrificial virgins
 * 5) The relationship between Galen and Valerian

North had six weeks to compose the score, which features music rejected from his score for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. The opening sequence of Dragonslayer features a reworking of his original music for the opening of 2001's "Dawn of Man" sequence—which in that final film is played without music—and a waltz representing the dragon in flight that had been a variation of the cue "Space Station Docking", which in the final cut of 2001 was replaced by "The Blue Danube". North was disappointed by the resulting dragon scenes, as they do not use the entirety of the pieces he composed for them. He later stated that he had written "a very lovely waltz for when the dragon first appears, with just a slight indication that this may not be a bad dragon". The waltz was replaced by tracks used earlier in the movie.

The score was widely praised. Pauline Kael wrote in the New Yorker that the score was a "beauty", and that "at times, the music and the fiery dragon seem one". Royal S. Brown of Fanfare Magazine praised the soundtrack as "one of the best scores of 1981".

On April 22, 2010, a limited-edition soundtrack CD was released on La-La Land Records.

Box office
The film grossed just over $14 million in the US with an estimated budget of $18 million. It later became a cult film.

Critical response
At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 84% score based on 37 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critic consensus reads, "An atypically dark Disney adventure, Dragonslayer puts a realistic spin — and some impressive special effects — on a familiar tale." At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

The book Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Film says: "Dragonslayer is a compelling and often brilliant fantasy film [... but] it seeks, as well, to impose modern sensibilities on its medieval characters and plot—20th-century political, sociological, and religious sensibilities, which only serve to dilute its particular strengths."

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both gave the film three stars out of four in their respective print reviews. Siskel praised the "dazzling special effects" and the "convincing portrait by Ralph Richardson of the aged magician Ulrich", and Ebert called the scenes involving the dragon "first-rate".

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called Vermithrax "the greatest dragon yet", and praised the film for its effective evocation of the Dark Ages.

David Denby of New York praised Dragonslayer's special effects and lauded the film as being much better than Excalibur and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

David Sterritt of The Christian Science Monitor praised the sets and pacing of the film, and criticized it for lack of originality, stressing that MacNicol and Richardson's characters bore too many similarities to the heroes of Star Wars. A similar critique was given by John Coleman of the New Statesman, who called the film a "turgid sword-and-sorcery fable, with Ralph Richardson in a backdated kind of Star Wars of Alec Guinness role".

Tim Pulleine of the Monthly Film Bulletin criticized the film's lack of narrative drive and clarity to supplement the special effects. Upon the film's first television broadcast, Gannett News Service columnist Mike Hughes called the story "slight" and "slow-paced", but admired a "lyrical beauty to the setting and mood". Nonetheless, he warned: "In movie theaters, that came across wonderfully; on a little TV screen, this may be strictly for specialized tastes."

Alex Keneas of Newsday criticized the focus on superstition, and for being "bereft of any sense of medieval time, place and society".

Larry DiTillio reviewed Dragonslayer for Different Worlds magazine and stated, "Much imagination went into the recreation of this world and fans will revel in it when they see it."

Christopher John reviewed Dragonslayer in Ares magazine and commented, "Though the dialogue is occasionally stiff, there is a believable reality. When the people and setting of a fantasy are as carefully wrought as they are here, it is easy to get an audience to accept as small and wonderful a thing as a dragon."

Vermithrax Pejorative
Guillermo del Toro has stated that along with Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, Vermithrax is his favorite cinematic dragon. He further stated that: "One of the best and one of the strongest landmarks [of dragon movies] that almost nobody can overcome is Dragonslayer. The design of Vermithrax Pejorative is perhaps one of the most perfect creature designs ever made."

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin once ranked it the fifth-best fantasy film of all time, and called Vermithrax "the best dragon ever put on film [with] the coolest dragon name". Vermithrax is mentioned as an Easter egg in a list of dragons' names in the fourth episode of that book series adaptation, Game of Thrones. Fantasy author Alex Bledsoe stated: "...everyone has a 'first dragon', the one that awoke their sense of wonder about the creatures. For many it's Anne McCaffrey's elaborate world of Pern, where genetically engineered intelligent dragons bond with their riders; for others, it's Smaug in The Hobbit, guarding his hoard deep in a cave. But for me, it was the awesome Vermithrax from the 1981 film, Dragonslayer."

During filming of Return of the Jedi, in which Ian McDiarmid, who portrays minor character Brother Jacopus in Dragonslayer, stars as the film's main antagonist, Emperor Palpatine, the ILM crew jokingly placed a model of Vermithrax in the arms of the Rancor model and took a picture. The picture was included in the book Star Wars: Chronicles. A creature based on the appearance of this dragon appears in one of Jabba the Hutt's creature pens in Inside the Worlds of Star Wars Trilogy.

Related media
A novelization, Dragonslayer, was written by Wayland Drew, that delves deeper into the background of many of the characters.

Marvel Comics published three formats of Dragonslayer adaptations in 1981; all were by the same team. These were a magazine-sized issue, a two-issue standard comic-sized adaptation, and a paperback format (Marvel Illustrated) of the two comic books in 160 pages, due to the smaller pages. Credits include writer Dennis O'Neil, and artists Marie Severin and John Tartaglione, in Marvel Super Special #20.

Simulations Publications, Inc. produced the board game Dragonslayer, designed by Brad Hessel and Redmond A. Simonsen.

Australian label Southern Cross initially released an unauthorized soundtrack album in 1983 on LP (a boxed audiophile pressing, at 45 rpm), and in 1990 on CD. The first official and improved CD release came in 2010 by U.S. label La-La Land Records. The new album features newly mastered audio from the original LCR (Left-Center-Right) mix, previously unreleased source music, and alternative takes.

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George Saling

George J. Saling (July 27, 1909 – April 15, 1933) was an American track and field athlete, winner of 110 m hurdles at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Saling was born in Memphis, Missouri, but the family moved to Corydon, Iowa when George was three months old. He graduated from Corydon High School in 1927 and was the captain of the basketball team. At the University of Iowa, Saling established himself as a world class hurdler during his senior year, in 1932, winning the NCAA Championships in 110 m hurdles, equaling the Percy Beard's world record of 14.4. At the AAU Championships, Saling lost in 110 m hurdles final to Jack Keller by 4 ft, but won the 200 m hurdles title, thus earning a place in the Olympic team.

At the Los Angeles Olympic Games, Saling beat his chief rival, Percy Beard, in the semi-final by 0.2 seconds and then again in the final by 0.1 seconds.

That would remain his last victory on the track, because George Saling was killed in a car accident in Missouri six months after the Olympic Games, aged only 23.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: George Saling


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Z-order

Z-order is an ordering of overlapping two-dimensional objects, such as windows in a stacking window manager, shapes in a vector graphics editor, or objects in a 3D application. One of the features of a typical GUI is that windows may overlap, so that one window hides part or all of another. When two windows overlap, their Z-order determines which one appears on top of the other.

Definition
The term "Z-order" refers to the order of objects along the Z-axis. In coordinate geometry, X typically refers to the horizontal axis (left to right), Y to the vertical axis (up and down), and Z refers to the axis perpendicular to the other two (forward or backward). One can think of the windows in a GUI as a series of planes parallel to the surface of the monitor. The windows are therefore stacked along the Z-axis, and the Z-order information thus specifies the front-to-back ordering of the windows on the screen. An analogy would be some sheets of paper scattered on top of a table, each sheet being a window, the table your computer screen, and the top sheet having the highest Z value.

Use
Typically, users of a GUI can affect the Z-order by selecting a window to be brought to the foreground (that is, "above" or "in front of" all the other windows). Some window managers allow interaction with windows while they are not in the foreground, while others will bring a window to the front whenever it receives input from the user. It is also possible for special windows to be designated "always on top"; these are then fixed to the top of the Z-order so that (with few exceptions) no other window can overlap them.

When dealing with visual objects on a computer screen, an object with a Z-order of 1 would be visually "underneath" an object with a Z-order of 2 or greater. This is the same as making "layers" of objects where the Z-order determines what object is on top of another. An HTML page can use CSS to specify the Z-order so that some objects can be layered over others.

Z-ordering is also used in 3D applications to determine object visibility based on overlap from other objects. This confers a speed advantage to the user as the computer does not need to render unseen objects. In practice, of course, some objects may be only partially obscured, and this is a complication that must be taken into account.

z-index
The actual number assigned to a particular place in the Z-order is sometimes known as the z-index. In particular the CSS property that sets the stack order of specific elements is known as the z-index. An element with greater stack order is always in front of another element with lower stack order.

Negative stack orders can also be used in the same manner. A negative value will appear behind a positive one. only works on elements that have a position value (e.g. ) and for many coders, this one of the first things to investigate when debugging why the z-index isn't working.

Like all other CSS properties, it can be set with JavaScript as well with the following syntax:

title: Z-order


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Chello

Chello was the brand of internet service provider-activities of Liberty Global Europe (formerly UGC), a provider of broadband internet access via cable in Europe, with estimated 1.3 million customers across its markets. LGE operates in 15 European, 4 Latin American and 2 Asian/Pacific countries. The Chello branded internet service were available in seven of these: Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Slovakia. The Chello brand was introduced in the European market in 1998 and was awarded the best Consumer ISP award in 1999

Features of the Chello service are standardized according to the cable provider. In each market Chello delivered open-access content portals that featured local news and entertainment content. Also, all users of the service were granted email addresses.

Chello products were typically available at many speeds and are named Chello Starter, Chello Easy, Chello Classic, Chello Plus and Chello Extreme.

The Chello brand appears to have been replaced by other brands. For example, in The Netherlands, Chello has been renamed to UPC Live. UPC Live also has replaced Chello in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. In Sweden, Chello has been replaced by ComHem, and in Norway, by Get. In Ireland, UPC Ireland took over the broadband and cable service NTL in 2005, having previously bought another Irish cable provider - Chorus. In 2015, UPC in Ireland was rebranded as Virgin Media Ireland. In Belgium, Chello was a product of UPC that was absorbed by Telenet in 2006 when Liberty Global bought a majority stake in Telenet.

The brand was available in New Zealand in the early 2000s, under TelstraSaturn's cable network.

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Blue Origin

Blue Origin Enterprises, L.P., commonly referred to as Blue Origin is an American aerospace manufacturer, government contractor, launch service provider, and space technologies company headquartered in Kent, Washington, United States. The company makes rocket engines for United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s Vulcan rocket and manufactures their own rockets, spacecraft, satellites, and heavy-lift launch vehicles. The company is the second provider of lunar lander services for NASA's Artemis program and was awarded a $3.4 billion contract. The four rocket engines the company has in production are the BE-3U, BE-3PM, BE-4 and the BE-7.

The organization was awarded the Robert J. Collier Trophy in 2016 for demonstrating rocket booster reusability with their New Shepard Rocket Program. The award is administered by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and is presented to those who have made "the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with respect to improving the performance, efficiency, and safety of air or space vehicles, the value of which has been thoroughly demonstrated by actual use during the preceding year."

History
The company was founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Rob Meyerson joined the company in 2003 and served as the CEO before leaving the company in 2018. Bob Smith served as CEO from 2018 to 2023. The current CEO is Dave Limp. Little is known about the company's activities in its early years. In 2006, the company purchased land for its New Shepard missions 30 miles North of Van Horn, Texas, United States called Launch Site One (LS1). In November 2006, the first test vehicle was launched, the Goddard rocket, which reached an altitude of 285 feet.

After initiating the development of an orbital rocket system prior to 2012, and stating in 2013 on their website that the first stage would perform a powered vertical landing and be reusable, the company publicly announced their orbital launch vehicle intentions in September 2015. In January 2016, the company indicated that the new rocket would be many times larger than New Shepard. The company publicly released the high-level design of the vehicle and announced its name in September 2016 as "New Glenn". The New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle can be configured in both two-stage and three-stage variants. New Glenn is planned to launch in Q3 of 2024.

On July 20, 2021, New Shepard performed its first crewed mission to sub-orbital space called Blue Origin NS-16. The flight lasted approximately 10 minutes and crossed the Kármán line. The passengers were Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and Oliver Daemen, after the unnamed auction winner (later revealed to have been Justin Sun) dropped out due to a scheduling conflict. Subsequent New Shepard passenger and cargo missions were: Blue Origin NS-17, Blue Origin NS-18, Blue Origin NS-19, Blue Origin NS-20, Blue Origin NS-21 and Blue Origin NS-23.

The company primarily employs an incremental approach from sub-orbital to orbital flight, with each developmental step building on its prior work. The company moved into the orbital spaceflight technology development business in 2014, initially as a rocket engine supplier via a contractual agreement to build the BE-4 rocket engine, for major US launch system operator United Launch Alliance (ULA). United Launch Alliance (ULA) has said that the first flight of its Vulcan Centaur heavy-lift launch vehicle is scheduled to launch in Q4 of 2023. The heavy-lift launch vehicles main power is supported by two BE-4 engines. On June 7, 2023, United Launch Alliance (ULA) performed a Flight Readiness Firing of the Vulcan Centaur rocket at launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States. The two BE-4 rocket engines worked as expected.

In 2024, the company won its first NSSL contract, the vehicle to be used on the launches is New Glenn.

New Shepard
New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and landings and can carry humans and customer payloads to the edge of space.

The New Shepard launch vehicle is a rocket that consists of a booster rocket and a crew capsule. The capsule can be configured to house up to six passengers, cargo, or a combination of both. The booster rocket is powered by one BE-3PM engine, which sends the capsule to an apogee (Sub-Orbital) of 100.5 km and flies above the Kármán line, where passengers and cargo can experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule returns to Earth.

The launch vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule returning to Earth via three parachutes and a solid rocket motor. The booster lands vertically on the same launchpad it took off from. The company has successfully launched and landed the New Shepard launch vehicle 23 times with 1 partial failure deemed successful and 1 failure. The launch vehicle has a length of 15.0 m, a diameter of 3.7 m and a launch mass of 75 ST. The BE-3PM engine produces 490 kN of thrust at takeoff. New Shepard allows the company to significantly reduce the cost of space tourism, making the experience more accessible to the general public.

New Glenn
New Glenn is a heavy-lift launch vehicle and is expected to launch in Q3 of 2024 on the EscaPADE mission. The launch date has been set back because of numerous delays. Named after NASA astronaut John Glenn, design work on the vehicle began in early 2012. Illustrations of the vehicle, and the high-level specifications, were initially publicly unveiled in September 2016. The full vehicle was first unveiled on a launch pad on February 21, 2024. The rocket has a diameter of 7 meters (23 ft), and its first stage is powered by seven BE-4 engines. The 7 meter-diameter fairing is claimed to have twice the payload volume of "any commercial launch system" and to be the biggest payload fairing in the world.

Like the New Shepard, New Glenn's first stage is also designed to be reusable. In 2021, the company initiated conceptual design work on approaches to potentially make the second stage reusable as well, with the project codenamed "Project Jarvis".

NASA announced on February 9, 2023, that it had selected the New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle for the launch of two Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) spacecraft. The New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle will launch ESCAPADE in Q3 of 2024 with the ESCAPADE spacecraft entering Mars's orbit approximately one year after launch.

In 2024, Blue Origin received funding from the USSF to assess New Glenn's ability to launch national security payloads.

Blue Moon
In May 2019, Jeff Bezos announced plans for a crew-carrying lunar lander known as Blue Moon. The standard version of the lander is intended to transport 3.6 tonnes to the lunar surface, whereas a stretched tank variant could land up to 6.5 tonnes on the Moon, both are vehicles designed to make a soft landing on the Moon's surface.

The lander will use the BE-7 hydrolox engine. On May 19, 2023, NASA contracted Blue Origin to develop, test and deploy its Blue Moon landing system for the agency's Artemis V mission, which explores the Moon and prepares future crewed missions to Mars. The project includes an uncrewed test mission followed by a crewed Moon landing in 2029. The contract value is $3.4 billion. In mid 2024, the company announced initial acceptance testing completion on the thrusters for the MK1 variant of the Blue Moon lander.

BE-1
Blue Origin's first engine was a "simple, single-propellant engine" called the Blue Engine-1 (BE-1) which used peroxide propellant and generated only 2000 lbf of thrust.

BE-2
The Blue Engine-2 (BE-2) which was a bipropellant engine using kerosene and peroxide, producing 31000 lbf thrust.

BE-3 (BE-3U and BE-3PM)
The BE-3 is a family of rocket engines made by Blue Origin with two variants, the BE-3U and BE-3PM. The rocket engine is a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen (LH2/LOX) cryogenic engine that can produce 110000 lbf and 710 kN (160,000 lbf) of thrust, respectively. Early thrust chamber testing began at NASA Stennis in 2013. By late 2013, the BE-3 had been successfully tested on a full-duration sub-orbital burn, with simulated coast phases and engine relights, "demonstrating deep throttle, full power, long-duration and reliable restart all in a single-test sequence." NASA has released a video of the test. , the engine had demonstrated more than 160 starts and 9100 s of operation at the company's test facility near Van Horn, Texas.

 * 1) The BE-3U is an open expander cycle variant of the BE-3. Two of these engines will be used to power the New Glenn heavy-lift launch vehicle's second stage. The amount of thrust the BE-3U produces is 710 kilonewtons (160,000 lbf).
 * 2) The BE-3PM, uses a pump-fed engine design, with a combustion tap-off cycle to take a small amount of combustion gases from the main combustion chamber to power the engine's turbopumps. One engine is used to power the Propulsive Module (PM) of New Shepard. The amount of thrust the BE-3PM produces is 490 kilonewtons (110,000 lbf). The rocket engine can be throttled down to as low as 110 kN (25,000 lbf) for use in controlled vertical landings.

BE-4
The BE-4 is a liquid oxygen/liquified natural gas (LOX/LNG) rocket engine that can produce 550000 lbf of thrust.

In late 2014, the company signed an agreement with United Launch Alliance (ULA) to develop the BE-4 engine, for ULA's upgraded Atlas V and Vulcan Centaur rockets replacing the RD-180 Russian-made rocket engine. The newly developed heavy-lift launch vehicle will use two of the 550000 lbf BE-4 engines on each first stage. The engine development program for the BE-4 began in 2011.

On October 31, 2022, a Twitter post by the official Blue Origin account announced that the first two BE-4 engines had been delivered to ULA and were in the process of being integrated on a Vulcan rocket. In a later tweet, ULA CEO Tory Bruno said that one of the engines had already been installed on the booster, and that the other would be joining it momentarily. On June 7, 2023, the two BE-4 rocket engines performed as expected when ULA performed a Flight Readiness Firing of the Vulcan Rocket at launch pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Vulcan Centaur launched for the first time on January 8, 2024, successfully carrying Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lunar lander, the first mission on NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program using the BE-4 engine.

BE-7
The BE-7 engine is a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen dual expander cycle engine currently under development, designed for use on Blue Moon. The engine produces 10000 lbf of thrust. Its first ignition tests were performed in June 2019, with thrust chamber assembly testing continuing through 2023.

Pusher escape motor
The company partnered with Aerojet Rocketdyne to develop a pusher launch escape system for the New Shepard suborbital crew capsule. Aerojet Rocketdyne provides the Crew Capsule Escape Solid Rocket Motor (CCE SRM) while the thrust vector control system that steers the capsule during an abort is designed and manufactured by Blue Origin.

Facilities
The company has facilities across the United States which include five main locations and five field offices:
 * Kent, Washington (headquarters)
 * Van Horn, Texas
 * Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida
 * Huntsville, Alabama
 * Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama
 * Arlington, Virginia
 * Denver, Colorado
 * Los Angeles, California
 * Phoenix, Arizona
 * Washington, DC

The company’s headquarters is in Kent, Washington. Rocket development takes place at its Headquarters. The company has continued to expand its Seattle-area offices and rocket production facilities since 2016, purchasing an adjacent 120000 ft2-building. In 2017, the company filed permits to build a new 236000 ft2 warehouse complex and an additional 102900 ft2 of office space. The company established a new headquarters and R&D facility, called the O'Neill Building on June 6, 2020.

Launch Site One (LSO)
Corn Ranch, commonly referred to as Launch Site One (LSO) is the company's launch site 30 miles north of Van Horn, Texas. The launch facility is located at 31.422927°N 104.757152°W.

In addition to the sub-orbital launch pad, Launch Site One (LSO) includes a number of rocket engine test stands and engine test cells are at the site to support the hydrolox, methalox and storable propellant engines that are used. There are three test cells for testing the BE-3 and BE-4 engines. The test cells support full-thrust and full-duration burns, and one supports short-duration, high-pressure preburner tests.

Blue Engine
Engine production is located in Huntsville, Alabama, at a 600,000sqft facility called, "Blue Engine". The companies website states that, "The world-class engine manufacturing facility in The Rocket City conduct[s] high rate production of the BE-4 and BE-3U engines.

The company is planning a third major expansion in Huntsville and the company was approved for the sale of 14.83 acres adjacent to its already sprawling campus at the price of $1.427 million.

Orbital Launch Site (OLS)
The Orbital Launch Site (OLS) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, develops rockets and does extensive testing. The company converted Launch Complex 36 (LC-36) to launch its New Glenn into orbit at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The facility was initially completed in 2020 and is being used for the construction of New Glenn prototypes, rocket testing, and designs.

The companies facility is situated on 306 acres of land assembled from former Launch Complexes 11, 36A, and 36B. The land parcel used to build a rocket engine test stand for the BE-4 engine, a launch mount, called the Orbital Launch Site, (hence its name) and a reusable booster refurbishment facility for the New Glenn launch vehicle, which is expected to land on a drone ship and return to Port Canaveral for refurbishment. Manufacturing of "large elements, such as New Glenn's first and second stages as well as the payload fairings and other large components will be made nearby in Exploration Park, which is near the entrance to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, Florida.

Blue Ring (Space Truck Vehicle)
The Blue Ring vehicle was announced in October 2023 by Blue Origin. It will have its own engine and is meant to handle orbital logistics and delivery. In March 2024, in partnership with the United States Space Force, it was announced that the Blue Ring’s capabilities will be tested soon on a mission called DarkSky-1.

Orbital Reef (commercial space station)
The company and its partners Sierra Space, Boeing, Redwire Space and Genesis Engineering Solutions won a $130million award to jump-start the design of their Orbital Reef commercial space station. The project is envisioned as an expandable business park, with Boeing's Starliner and Sierra Space's Dream Chaser transporting passengers to and from low Earth orbit (LEO) for tourism, research and in-space manufacturing projects.

Orbital Reef’s design will be modular in nature, to provide the greatest amount of customization and compatibility. It will reportedly be designed to accept docking from almost every in operation spacecraft like SpaceX Dragon 2, Soyuz (spacecraft), Dream Chaser, and Boeing Starliner. The initial modules will be: Life, Node, Core, and Research Modules.

In 2024 NASA increased funding for Orbital Reef by $42 million, bringing the total award to $172 million.

Nuclear rocket program
NASA plans to test spacecraft, engines and other propellent systems powered by nuclear fission no later than 2027 as part of the agency's effort to demonstrate more efficient methods of traveling through outer space for space exploration. One benefit to using nuclear fission as a propellent for spacecraft is that nuclear-based systems can have less mass than solar cells which means a spacecraft could be much smaller while absorbing and using the same amount of energy more efficiently. Nuclear fission concepts that can power both life support and propulsion systems could greatly reduce the cost and flight time during space exploration.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Blue Origin contracts to fund and build nuclear spacecraft under the agency's Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program or DRACO program. The company was awarded $2.9 million to develop spacecraft component designs.

In partnership with Blue Origin, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp., GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, GE Research, Framatome and Materion, USNC-Tech won a $5 million contract from NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop a long range nuclear propulsion system called the Power Adjusted Demonstration Mars Engine, or PADME.

Space Technology
NASA awarded $35 million to the company in 2023 for the company's work on lunar regrowth to be used for solar powered systems on the moon. The company's website states that "Blue Alchemist is a proposed end-to-end, scalable, autonomous, and commercial solution that produces solar cells from lunar regolith, which is the dust and crushed rock abundant on the surface of the Moon. Based on a process called molten regolith electrolysis, the breakthrough would bootstrap unlimited electricity and power transmission cables anywhere on the surface of the Moon. This process also produces oxygen as a useful byproduct for propulsion and life support."

Gary Lai, chief architect of the New Shepard rocket said during the pathfinder awards at the Seattle Museum of Flight that [The company] "aims to be the first company that harvests natural resources from the moon to use here on Earth,” He also mentioned that the company is building a novel approach to extract outer space's vast resources.

Blue Origin flight data
In the chart below, ♺ means "Flight Proven Booster"

NASA partnerships and funding
The company has contracted to do work for NASA on several development efforts. The company was awarded $3.7 million in funding by NASA in 2009 via a Space Act Agreement under the first Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program for development of concepts and technologies to support future human spaceflight operations. NASA co-funded risk-mitigation activities related to ground testing of (1) an innovative 'pusher' escape system, that lowers cost by being reusable and enhances safety by avoiding the jettison event of a traditional 'tractor' Launch Escape System, and (2) an innovative composite pressure vessel cabin that both reduces weight and increases safety of astronauts. This was later revealed to be a part of a larger system, designed for a bionic capsule, that would be launched atop an Atlas V rocket. On November 8, 2010, it was announced that the company had completed all milestones under its CCDev Space Act Agreement.

In April 2011, The company received a commitment from NASA for $22 million of funding under the CCDev phase 2 program. Milestones included (1) performing a Mission Concept Review (MCR) and System Requirements Review (SRR) on the orbital Space Vehicle, which utilizes a bionic shape to optimize its launch profile and atmospheric reentry, (2) further maturing the pusher escape system, including ground and flight tests, and (3) accelerating development of its BE-3 LOX/LH2 100,000 lbf engine through full-scale thrust chamber testing.

In 2012, NASA's Commercial Crew Program released its follow-on CCiCap solicitation for the development of crew delivery to ISS by 2017. The company did not submit a proposal for CCiCap, but reportedly continued work on its development program with private funding. The company had a failed attempt to lease a different part of the Space Coast, when they submitted a bid in 2013 to lease Launch Complex 39A (LC39A) at the Kennedy Space Center – on land to the north of, and adjacent to, Cape Canaveral AFS – following NASA's decision to lease the unused complex out as part of a bid to reduce annual operation and maintenance costs. The companies bid was for shared and non-exclusive use of the LC39A complex such that the launchpad was to have been able to interface with multiple vehicles, and costs for using the launch pad were to have been shared across multiple companies over the term of the lease. One potential shared user in the companies proposed plan was United Launch Alliance (ULA). Commercial use of the LC39A launch complex was awarded to SpaceX, which submitted a bid for exclusive use of the launch complex to support their crewed missions.

The company completed work for NASA on several small development contracts, receiving total funding of $25.7 million by 2013. In September 2013 – before completion of the bid period, and before any public announcement by NASA of the results of the process – Florida Today reported that the company had filed a protest with the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) "over what it says is a plan by NASA to award an exclusive commercial lease to SpaceX for use of mothballed space shuttle launch pad 39A". NASA had originally planned to complete the bid award and have the pad transferred by October 1, 2013, but the protest delayed a decision until the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reached a decision on the protest. SpaceX said that they would be willing to support a multi-user arrangement for pad 39A. In December 2013, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) denied the companies protest and sided with NASA, which argued that the solicitation contained no preference on the use of the facility as either multi-use or single-use. "The [solicitation] document merely [asked] bidders to explain their reasons for selecting one approach instead of the other and how they would manage the facility". NASA selected the SpaceX proposal in late 2013 and signed a 20-year lease contract for Launch Pad 39A to SpaceX in April 2014.

The company placed their first bid via the NASA Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) competition to fund and develop a lunar lander capable of transporting astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The Blue Origin led team called the "National Team" included, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. On April 30, 2020, the company and its partners won a $579 million contract to start developing and testing an integrated Human Landing System (HLS) for the Artemis program to return humans to the Moon. However, the Blue Origin led team lost their first bid to work for NASA's  Artemis program and on April 16, 2021, NASA officially selected the Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) to develop, test and build their version of the Human Landing System (HLS) for Artemis missions 2 (II), 3 (III) and 4 (IV).

In early 2021, the company received over $275 million from NASA for lunar lander projects and sub-orbital research flights.

The company then announced on December 6, 2022, that it had submitted a second bid via the NASA Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) competition to fund and develop a second lunar lander capable for transporting astronauts to and from the lunar surface. The announcement fell within NASA's deadline for Sustaining Lunar Development (SLD) proposals. As with their first bid, the company is leading another team called the "National Team" which includes Draper, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics and Blue Origin.

On May 19, 2023 NASA contracted the company to develop, test and deploy its Blue Moon landing system for the agency's Artemis V mission, which explores the Moon and prepares future manned missions to Mars. The project includes an unmanned test mission followed by a manned Moon landing in 2029. The contract value is $3.4 billion.

Internal and additional U.S Government funding
By July 2014, Jeff Bezos had invested over $500million into the company. and the vast majority of further funding into 2016 was to support technology development and operations where a majority of funding came from Jeff Bezos' private investment fund. In April 2017, an annual amount was published showing that Jeff Bezos was selling approximately $1billion in Amazon stock per year to invest in the company. Jeff Bezos has been criticized for spending excessive amounts of his fortune on spaceflight.

The company received $181 million from the United States Air Force for launch vehicle development in 2019. The company was also eligible to benefit from further grants totaling $500M as part of the U.S. Space Force Launch Services Agreement competition. On November 18, 2022, the U.S. Space Systems Command announced that an agreement with the company that "paves the way" for the company's New Glenn rocket to compete for national security launch contracts once it completes its required flight certifications for Top Secret military payloads.

In an interview with the Bob Smith by the financial Times in 2023, Smith said that the company had "hundreds of millions in revenue as well as billions of dollars in orders".

The company is part of the DARPA Lunar Programs, specifically Luna10, an architecture study for lunar surface operations.

Charon
The companies first flight test vehicle, called Charon after Pluto's moon, was powered by four vertically mounted Rolls-Royce Viper Mk. 301 jet engines rather than rockets. The low-altitude vehicle was developed to test autonomous guidance and control technologies, and the processes that the company would use to develop its later rockets. Charon made its only test flight at Moses Lake, Washington on March 5, 2005. It flew to an altitude of 316 ft before returning for a controlled landing near the liftoff point. As of 2016, Charon is on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington.

Goddard
The next test vehicle, named Goddard (also known as PM1), first flew on November 13, 2006. The flight was successful. A test flight for December 2 never launched. According to Federal Aviation Administration records, two further flights were performed by Goddard. Blue Engine 1, or BE-1, was the first rocket engine developed by the company and was used in the company's Goddard development vehicle.

PM2
Another early suborbital test vehicle, PM2, had two flight tests in 2011 in west Texas. The vehicle designation may be short for "Propulsion Module". The first flight was a short hop (low altitude, VTVL takeoff and landing mission) flown on May 6, 2011. The second flight, August 24, 2011, failed when ground personnel lost contact and control of the vehicle. The company released its analysis of the failure nine days later. As the vehicle reached a speed of Mach 1.2 and 14 km altitude, a "flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered [the] range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle". The vehicle was lost. Blue Engine 2, or BE-2, was a pump-fed bipropellant engine burning kerosene and peroxide which produced 31000 lbf of thrust. Five BE-2 engines powered the companies PM-2 development vehicle on two test flights in 2011.

title: Blue Origin


text: Category:Pinball computer games

title: Category:Pinball computer games


text:
File:Mule box.jpg

Description
Cover art of the game M.U.L.E.

Fair use in M.U.L.E.
Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because:
 * 1) Ozark Softscape has released no such images into the public domain, and a replacement image could not be created that would adequately provide the same information.
 * 2) The image is being used for no purpose other than to identify the subject of the article.
 * 3) The image resolution has been significantly decreased from the original, so copies made from it would be of inferior quality.
 * 4) The use of this image neither detracts from the game nor inhibits its salability in any way.

title: File:Mule box.jpg


text:
List of rulers of the Ngoni dynasty of Jere (Qeko)

This is a list of rulers of the Ngoni dynasty.

Jere, (Qeko), (Malawi) and (Tanzania)
Jere Dynasty (Qeko dynasty) (Ngoni Dynasty)


text: Category:Internet service providers

title: Category:Internet service providers