design was begun on a space capsule in the early 2000s. One development milestone along the way became public. On 19 October 2012, Blue Origin conducted a successful pad escape of a full-scale suborbital crew capsule at its West Texas launch site. For the test, the capsule fired its pusher escape motor and launched from a launch vehicle simulator. The Crew Capsule traveled to an altitude of under active thrust vector control before descending safely by parachute to a soft landing downrange. In April 2015, Blue Origin announced that they had completed acceptance testing of the BE-3 engine that would power the larger New Shepard vehicle. Blue Origin also announced that they intended to begin flight testing of the New Shepard later in 2015, with initial flights occurring as frequently as monthly, with "a series of dozens of flights over the extent of the suborbital test program [taking] a couple of years to complete". The same month, the FAA announced that the regulatory paperwork for the test program had already been filed and approved, and test flights were expected to begin before mid-May 2015. By February 2016, three New Shepard vehicles had been built. The first was lost in a test in April 2015, the second had flown twice (see below), and the third was completing manufacture at the Blue Origin factory in Kent, Washington. In 2016, the Blue Origin team were awarded the Collier Trophy for demonstrating rocket booster reusability with the New Shepard human spaceflight vehicle. Flight test program A multi-year program of flight tests was begun in 2015 and continued into 2021. By mid-2016, the test program was sufficiently advanced that Blue Origin began flying suborbital research payloads for universities and NASA. The flight-test program was completed in early 2021 and the first flight carrying passengers to suborbital space occurred in July 2021. New Shepard 1 The first flight of the full-scale New Shepard vehicle – NS1 – also called "Tail 1" – was conducted on 29 April 2015 during which an altitude of was attained. While the test flight itself was deemed a success, and the capsule was successfully recovered via parachute landing, the booster crash landed and was not recovered due to a failure of hydraulic pressure in the vehicle control system during descent. The capsule was called RSS Jules Verne. New Shepard 2 The New Shepard 2 (NS2), also called "Tail 2", flight test