{"id":17202,"date":"2024-05-19T18:59:15","date_gmt":"2024-05-19T10:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blue-origin-flies-its-first-crew-in-21-months-and-writes-another-page-in-space-history\/"},"modified":"2024-05-19T18:59:15","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T10:59:15","slug":"blue-origin-flies-its-first-crew-in-21-months-and-writes-another-page-in-space-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blue-origin-flies-its-first-crew-in-21-months-and-writes-another-page-in-space-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin flies its first crew in 21 months \u2014 and writes another page in space history"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full-width\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"630\" height=\"445\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240519-newshepard4-630x445.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-823656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240519-newshepard4-630x445.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240519-newshepard4-1260x890.jpg 1260w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240519-newshepard4-768x543.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/240519-newshepard4.jpg 1298w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" class=\"wp-element-caption\">Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard suborbital spaceship lifts off from its West Texas pad. (Credit: Blue Origin) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture today resumed sending people on suborbital space trips after a 21-month gap, and made a Black aerospace pioneer\u2019s 60-year-old dream come true in the process.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMan, it feels good to be flying again,\u201d launch commentator Ariane Cornell said.<\/p>\n<p>The six spacefliers on Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket ship included Ed Dwight, a retired military test pilot who missed his chance to become NASA\u2019s first Black astronaut in the 1960s. Today\u2019s flight made Dwight, 90, the oldest person to go into space, albeit on a suborbital rather than an orbital trip.<\/p>\n<p>Dwight took part in an Air Force training program that was meant to prepare participants for astronaut duty \u2014 but he was passed over. Whether that was because of racial politics or because he was too short to meet NASA\u2019s standards has been a topic of debate. In any case, it would be another two decades before&nbsp;Guion Bluford Jr. became the first Black American in space&nbsp;in 1983.<\/p>\n<p>Dwight went on to become a sculptor but held onto his dream of spaceflight. His Blue Origin trip was sponsored by a nonprofit group called Space for Humanity, with an assist from the Seattle-based Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation.<\/p>\n<p>When he stepped out of the capsule today, Dwight told well-wishers said that his space experience was \u201ca long time coming\u201d and that he was \u201coverwhelmed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a life-changing experience. Everybody needs to do this,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought I didn\u2019t need it in my life \u2026 but I lied.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ed Dwight NS-25\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QAfj-kUAmNM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the first time Blue Origin has taken a page from space history: In 2021, one of the participants in the company\u2019s first crewed spaceflight was Wally Funk, a member of the \u201cMercury 13\u201d group of women who went through astronaut training in the 1960s but never got to space. That mission made Funk the world\u2019s oldest spaceflier at the age of 82. Funk\u2019s record was broken by Star Trek actor William Shatner during another Blue Origin flight later that year \u2014 and now Dwight has surpassed Shatner\u2019s record by a month and a half.<\/p>\n<p>Dwight\u2019s crewmates on today\u2019s flight were venture capitalist Mason Angel, French brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth L. Hess, retired CPA and adventure traveler Carol Schaller, and airplane pilot and entrepreneur Gopi Thotakura. They are presumed to have paid their own way, but Blue Origin isn\u2019t saying how much they paid.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s mission, known as NS-25, was the 25th flight of the suborbital New Shepard program. Seven of those flights have been crewed, with a total of 37 people taking trips from Blue Origin\u2019s Launch Site One in West Texas.<\/p>\n<p>NS-25 followed the typical model for a New Shepard flight. The spaceship\u2019s hydrogen-fueled booster lifted off into clear skies, sending the crew capsule to a maximum height of about 107 kilometers (66 miles) \u2014 well beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) Karman Line that serves as the internationally accepted boundary of outer space.<\/p>\n<p>After the capsule\u2019s separation from the booster, the spacefliers experienced a few minutes of zero-gravity and gazed out through New Shepard\u2019s giant windows. Then they strapped themselves back into their seats for a parachute-assisted, airbag-cushioned landing amid the Texas rangeland. <\/p>\n<p>One of the capsule\u2019s three parachutes failed to inflate fully during the descent, but Cornell said that was \u201cperfectly OK for this system.\u201d Blue Origin is likely to review the data and address any concerns about the parachute system.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the booster made its own autonomous landing on a pad not far from where it took off. The mission lasted 9 minutes and 53 seconds from launch to the capsule\u2019s touchdown.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Blue Origin NS-25 New Shepard launch and landing\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h2zZsDAZfjs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p>In addition to carrying people, NS-25 carried postcards submitted by students as part of a program offered by the Club for the Future, Blue Origin\u2019s educational nonprofit foundation. The spacefliers brought along their own set of postcards.<\/p>\n<p>This was the first crewed New Shepard flight since August 2022. A month after that flight, a different New Shepard craft experienced a launch anomaly during an uncrewed research mission \u2014 and that forced a yearlong suspension of Blue Origin\u2019s launches. Blue Origin followed up on the investigation by taking more than 20 corrective actions, including a redesign of the BE-3 rocket engine\u2019s nozzle. Last December, a successful uncrewed flight set the stage for today\u2019s trip.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the suborbital New Shepard program, Kent, Wash.-based Blue Origin is developing an orbital-class New Glenn rocket that could have its first launch from Florida later this year. The company is also working on a lunar lander for NASA\u2019s use, a multi-mission orbital platform known as Blue Ring, a commercial space station project called Orbital Reef, and other advanced programs including a system for producing solar cells from lunar materials and beaming power between lunar installations using laser light.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard suborbital spaceship lifts off from its West Texas pad. (Credit: Blue Origin) Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture today resumed sending people on suborbital space trips after a 21-month gap, and made a Black aerospace pioneer\u2019s 60-year-old dream come true in the process. \u201cMan, it feels good to be flying again,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,4496,1250,4029,493,4402],"class_list":["post-17202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-ed-dwight","tag-new-shepard","tag-space-history","tag-space-tourism","tag-suborbital-spaceflight"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}