![]() The crew experienced about three to four minutes of weightlessness during which the spacecraft reached the top of its flight path at 66.5 miles, more than 10 miles higher than the British billionaire Sir Richard Branson’s flight to the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity nine days earlier.Īudio from the capsule on Blue Origin’s live webcast of the flight captured the crew members shouting in excitement as they floated around the spacecraft. The crew capsule successfully separated from its rocket booster shortly before reaching the 62-mile altitude Kármán Line, the internationally accepted boundary of space, after about three minutes of flight. New Shepard, named as a tribute to Alan Shepard, the first American in Space in 1961, blasted off into a clear blue sky from the launchpad in Van Horn, Texas, at 8.12am local time, the first of three scheduled flights this year, on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The firm intends to run regular space tourism flights for commercial passengers. “How fast can you refuel that thing? Let’s go.” When you go to space and see how fragile it is you want to take care of it even more.”īezos, who donated the proceeds from the New Shepard seat auction to Blue Origin’s Club for the Future to encourage young people to pursue careers in space and science, also announced two $100m “ Courage and Civility” awards for recipients to donate to charities of their choice.Īsked if he would fly into space again, Bezos was unequivocal. This is not about escaping Earth … this is the only good planet in the solar system and we have to take care of it. “We’re going to build a road to space so our kids, and their kids, can build the future. “Every time we fly this tourism mission we’re practicing flying the second stage of New Glenn,” he added, referring to Blue Origin’s planned reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle, which is central to his vision of ultimately moving industry off the planet. “The whole point of doing this is to practice,” said Bezos, who announced in February that he was donating $10bn to efforts to “ preserve and protect the natural world”. In a post-flight press conference on Tuesday, Bezos said the venture had reinforced his commitment to tackling the climate crisis, and using New Shepard as a stepping stone towards colonising space for the benefit of Earth. In recent years, Bezos, who stood down as Amazon chief executive this month to concentrate on the space company he founded in 2000, has sold about $1bn in Amazon stock annually to fund Blue Origin. The tycoon, however, has also attracted criticism for putting his fortune into space tourism amid concerns over working conditions at Amazon, and “aggressive” tax avoidance. Next, Blue Origin has to show that the New Shepard is truly reusable.Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos, pioneering female aviator Wally Funk and recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen pose ahead of their scheduled flight. Of course, landing a reusable rocket is still far from easy. 9 units for space and 900 for orbit.- Elon Musk November 24, 2015 Getting to space needs ~Mach 3, but GTO orbit requires ~Mach 30. On the other hand, New Shepard was required to cruise at the edge of space for several minutes. ![]() He also noted that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which has been in use by NASA along with the Dragon capsule, is designed to go to orbit. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated Blue Origin on their achievement today:Ĭongrats to Jeff Bezos and the BO team for achieving VTOL on their booster- Elon Musk November 24, 2015 ![]() Blue Origins does plan to open its space flights up to the public soon, and ticketing information is currently available at their website. The flight of the New Shepard was only revealed after the fact. Instead of working with commercial satellite companies or NASA, Blue Origin has been conducting its test flights on its own in relative secrecy. ![]()
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