{"id":17516,"date":"2021-07-20T21:21:38","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T13:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/best-day-ever-blue-origin-sends-jeff-bezos-on-suborbital-trip-with-oldest-and-youngest-spacefliers\/"},"modified":"2021-07-20T21:21:38","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T13:21:38","slug":"best-day-ever-blue-origin-sends-jeff-bezos-on-suborbital-trip-with-oldest-and-youngest-spacefliers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/best-day-ever-blue-origin-sends-jeff-bezos-on-suborbital-trip-with-oldest-and-youngest-spacefliers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Best day ever!\u2019 Blue Origin sends Jeff Bezos on suborbital trip with oldest and youngest spacefliers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jeff Bezos gets a welcome-back hug from his mother, Jacklyn Bezos, while crewmate Oliver Daemen, the world\u2019s youngest spacefarer, is helped out of the New Shepard capsule. (Blue Origin via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

VAN HORN, Texas \u2014 As of today, Jeff Bezos is not only the richest person on Earth. He\u2019s the richest person to fly to space as well.<\/p>\n

The billionaire and three crewmates \u2014 including the world\u2019s oldest space traveler and the youngest \u2014 took a 10-minute ride on a reusable New Shepard rocket ship that was built by Blue Origin, the company created by Bezos in 2000.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a very happy group of people in this capsule!\u201d Bezos could be heard saying just after touchdown. \u201cBest day ever!\u201d<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s flight marked the first time that people flew aboard New Shepard, which previously went through 15 uncrewed tests at Blue Origin\u2019s West Texas spaceport. The vehicle is designed to be flown autonomously, without a pilot at the controls.<\/p>\n

Before the flight, Bezos said it was important for him to take a seat on the first crewed flight and demonstrate New Shepard\u2019s safety. \u201cWe know the vehicle is safe,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cIf it\u2019s not safe for me, then it\u2019s not safe for anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a historical flourish that\u2019s fitting for a man who paid to have the booster engines for NASA\u2019s Apollo moon missions retrieved from the bottom of the Atlantic, the milestone flight took place on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. And speaking of flourishes, Jeff Bezos wore a cowboy hat and his lucky cowboy boots during the flight.<\/p>\n

New Shepard\u2019s first crew also included an aviation pioneer who missed out on NASA\u2019s glory days: Wally Funk, a member of the \u201cMercury 13\u201d group of women who were put through the same tests that the Mercury astronauts suffered through in the early 1960s but were never able to join the astronaut corps.<\/p>\n

Funk, who\u2019s now 82, today displaced the late Mercury astronaut John Glenn from the most senior spot on the list of spacefliers. (Glenn was 77 when he flew on the shuttle Discovery in 1998 as a U.S. senator.)<\/p>\n

After the landing, Bezos told Funk, \u201cWally, that was incredible!\u201d Funk answered, \u201cIt was! I was thinking that it would be more jerky and it wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard rocket ship rises from its Texas launch pad. (Blue Origin via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Another record-setter on the crew is Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student who is now the world\u2019s youngest person to fly to space. (The late Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who followed Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961 at the age of 25, previously held the record.)<\/p>\n

Daemen, the son of a Dutch investment company\u2019s CEO, had been planning to go on Blue Origin\u2019s second crewed flight. He was switched to the first crew when the winner of a $28 million auction asked to go on a later flight, reportedly due to a scheduling conflict.<\/p>\n

Bezos also brought along his brother, Mark Bezos, an investor and volunteer firefighter whom the billionaire described as his best friend. Just before launch, capsule communicator Sarah Knights read out a message from the Bezos brothers\u2019 sister, Christina Bezos, who reminded Mark about the \u201cStar Trek\u201d games they used to play (with Jeff filling the Captain Kirk role).<\/p>\n

\u201cMark, be prepared to fire those torpedoes if ordered to do so,\u201d Christina said.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s 10-minute mission was essentially a repeat of New Shepard\u2019s uncrewed test missions, starting with the ascent of the hydrogen-fueled booster from Blue Origin\u2019s Launch Site One at 8:11 a.m. CT (6:11 a.m. PT). Less than three minutes after liftoff, the crew capsule separated from the booster and continued rising to a peak altitude of 351,210 feet (107 kilometers, or 66.5 miles) above mean sea level.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s higher than the 100-kilometer Karman Line, which currently serves as the internationally accepted boundary of outer space. The Federal Aviation Administration, in contrast, uses a 50-mile standard.<\/p>\n

For the first time, actual people were able to unstrap themselves from their seats in the New Shepard capsule, gaze through the wide-angle windows at the Earth below, and float around the cabin in zero gravity for a few minutes. Blue Origin\u2019s previous missions used a sensor-laden test dummy nicknamed Mannequin Skywalker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was surprised at how easy zero-G was. \u2026 It\u2019s like swimming,\u201d Jeff Bezos told his crewmates after the touchdown.<\/p>\n

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On the way down, two sets of sonic booms could be heard: one from the booster, and one from the crew capsule.<\/p>\n

While the booster guided itself to an autonomous landing on a pad at Launch Site One, the capsule drifted down to the Texas desert at the end of its parachutes. Retro rockets fired just before touchdown, cushioning the impact and kicking up a cloud of dust. Soon afterward, Blue Origin\u2019s recovery team picked up the newly minted spacefliers.<\/p>\n

The successful flight stands as one of the greatest achievements to date for Blue Origin, the company that Bezos founded in 2000 with the ultimate goal of having \u201cmillions of people living and working in space.\u201d During a string of TV interviews on the eve of the flight, Bezos insisted that Blue Origin was building a \u201croad to space\u201d that future generations could follow for the benefit of humanity.<\/p>\n

In addition to the New Shepard program (named in honor of the late NASA astronaut Alan Shepard), Blue Origin is also developing an orbital-class rocket called New Glenn, and has been working with industry partners on a lunar landing system for NASA. Those programs have suffered setbacks, however, principally having to do with government contracts that were lost to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance.<\/p>\n

In the suborbital spaceflight market, Blue Origin\u2019s biggest competitor is Virgin Galactic, which is nearing the end of the flight test program for its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, dubbed VSS Unity. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson climbed aboard Unity for its most recent test flight last week, scoring a victory in the billionaire space race. However, Blue Origin beat Virgin Galactic to the punch today when it flew Daemens, the first suborbital space customer to use his ticket to fly.<\/p>\n

If all proceeds according to plan, Blue Origin will fly its next crewed suborbital space mission in the September-October time frame, while Virgin Galactic will start taking on commercial passengers next year.<\/p>\n

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New Shepard\u2019s booster sits on its landing pad after touchdown. (Blue Origin via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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New Shepard\u2019s crew capsule descends at the end of its parachutes. (Blue Origin via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The crew capsule touches down, throwing up a cloud of dust. (Blue Origin via YouTube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n