Jeff Bezos and three passengers reached the edge of space and returned safely Tuesday morning after a 10-minute flight that the billionaire hopes will usher in a new era of manned spaceflight. ET, The Edge of Space is a remote spot in western Texas where the New Shepard will enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness before taking off again. Bezos, along with three other people on the ground, completed the Blue Origin crew’s first short flight into space.
The New Shepard rocket split at an altitude of about 250,000 feet and took Bezos and his crew to the edge of the space station. The ship’s crew capsule floated away from its three parachutes and was spotted a few minutes later in the desert as the reusable booster returned, followed by two sound waves blacking out the pad on which it landed.
Bezos’ flight was a suborbital excursion, meaning he and his crew members did not enter orbit around Earth. When they reached the edge of space at an altitude of over 65 miles, they experienced four minutes of weightlessness. Before Bezos’ launch, billionaire British entrepreneur Richard Branson flew to the edge of space in a space rocket powered by a vehicle from his own space tourism firm Virgin Galactic.
Just nine days after billionaire Richard Branson made history by becoming the first man to launch his own Virgin Galactic plane into space, billionaire Jeff Bezos did the same with a rocket from his Blue Origin company. Both took a short trip and soared 60-several miles into the skies over West Texas in a spaceship built by Jeff Bezos’ Rich Human Worlds rocket company Blue Origin. The flight was attended by Young Daeman, Old Funk and Rich Bezos, the people who have reached space.
But Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, sat in the seat of a spaceship built by Mr. Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin, reflecting his enthusiasm for the venture and signaling his intention to abandon his focus on creative entrepreneurship that made Amazon one of the world’s greatest economic powers. Although it did not enter orbit, the flight was a milestone for the company, because it was the first time its vehicle had carried humans into space.
Mark Bezos, co-founder of the Private Equity firm Highpost Capital and the younger brother of Jeff Bezos, was also on Tuesday in space. Bezos and his brothers Mark Bezos (Mercury 13), aerospace pioneer Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daeman stayed in Blue Origin astronaut village, where they completed 14 hours of pre-flight training over two days to prepare for their space flight. Blue Origin’s pre-launch press conference on July 20 for its first manned flight can be seen live here.
In 2000, billionaire Jeff Bezos Blue Origin founded with plans for manned spaceflight, but it has been a long road to launch. Blue Origin’s new Shepard rocket and space capsule will have its first manned launch with Bezos, his brother Mark Mercury, 13-year-old aerospace pioneer Funk and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daeman on Tuesday, July 20 at 9: 00 am EDT (1300 GMT). See if Blue Origin and Bezos follow the path of their first astronaut launch, reports senior author Mike Wall.
Jeff Bezos will embark on a suborbital flight aboard his Blue Origin New Shepard rocket as part of a historic crew. The billionaire entrepreneur is set to fly on a nine-day journey from a desert location in West Texas after British rival Richard Branson and rival Space Tourism company Virgin Galactics successfully made their first suborbital flight from New Mexico. It is a milestone that could usher in a new era in private space travel.
On Tuesday,- Jeff Bezos launched his rocket into space on the first flight with humans aboard, making him the second billionaire in his own spaceship this week. The Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, named after America’s first astronaut, flew on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing to remote west Texas – a date chosen by Bezos because of its historical significance. Bezos held off the launch when Virgin Galactics’Richard Branson propelled his own flight from New Mexico in the race for the US dollar for space travel, beating him into space nine days earlier.
They included the company’s highest-paid customer, Oliver Daemen, a last-minute filler and the mysterious winner of a $2.8 million auction who chose a later flight. Ms. Funk trained as an astronaut in the 1960s, but was rejected after passing NASAs tests. The Dallas-based Funk, who made Bezos’ dream come true, was one of 13 female pilots that passed the same tests as the all-male NASA astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never made it to space.
Space travel is not a big deal, but this flight is a step in the direction of extending the horizon of space travel. This is not the first time that New Shepard rocket has been launched into space. This is the 16th flight of the rocket and the first flight with a crew.
They also show that their ship is capable of safely manned flights into space, expanding the scope of commercial space travel and opening up the space tourism industry. Early suborbital space tourism flights are still too expensive for the vast majority of people, but they do not expect that to change anytime soon. To sustain Earth, Blue Origin believes humanity needs to expand and explore to find new energy and material resources to shift industry and stress from Earth to space.
