Jeff Bezos explosion in space Tuesday became the second billionaire in a week to ride his own spacecraft, with people on the first flight of his rocket company.
The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands, and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas—the youngest and oldest to fly in space.
Named after America’s first astronaut, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifted off from far west Texas on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date chosen by Bezos for its historical significance.
Even as Virgin Galactic they put it fast Richard Branson The space tourist propelled his own flight out of New Mexico in the dollar race and beat him in space for nine days.
Unlike Branson’s piloted rocket plane, Bezos’s capsule was fully automated and required no official personnel on board for an estimated 10 minutes, up and down flight.
Blue Origin was shooting for an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers), which is 10 miles (16 km) higher than Branson’s July 11 ride. The 60-foot (18-m) booster accelerated to Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, to get high enough, before detaching the capsule and aiming for a vertical landing.
Passengers expected to get three to four minutes of weightlessness to float around the giant white capsule. Then the window-filled capsule was on its way to a parachute touchdown on the desert floor, with Bezos and his guests experiencing nearly six times the force of gravity, or 6G, on the way back.
Sharing the thrill of Bezos’s dreams coming true was Dallas-area Wally Funk, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as all-male NASA pilots. astronaut body in the early 1960s but never made it into space.
Joining him on Ultimate Joyride was the company’s first paying customer, Oliver Damon, a last-minute fill-in for the mystery winner of the $28 million auction, who opted for the latter flight.
The Dutch teenager’s father took part in the auction, and last week agreed to a lower undisclosed price when blue original Offered a vacant seat to his son.
Blue Origin — founded by Bezos in 2000 in Kent, Washington, near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters — has yet to open ticket sales to the public or disclose the price. For now, this auction is booking bidders. Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said two more passenger flights are planned by the end of the year.
According to company officials, the recycled rocket and capsule carrying Tuesday’s passengers were used in the last two space demonstrations.
Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations for over $250,000. Founded by Branson in 2004, the company has sent crews into space four times and is planning two more test flights from New Mexico before launching to customers next year.
Blue Origin’s approach was slower and more deliberate. After 15 successful empty test flights in space since 2015, Bezos finally announced it was time to put people on board.
The Federal Aviation Administration agreed last week, approving the commercial space license.
57-year-old Bezos, who is also the owner Washington Postclaimed the first seat. Next went to his 50-year-old brother, Mark Bezos, an investor and volunteer firefighter, then Funk and Damon. They spent two days together in training.
Space historian Jordan Bimm of the University of Chicago said that the passenger makeup is indeed remarkable. Imagine if the head of NASA decided he wanted to launch on the first American spacecraft in 1961 instead of Alan Shepard, he said in an email.
“That would have been unimaginable!” Bim said. “It shows the idea of who and what space has changed over the past 60 years.”
Bezos stepped down As CEO of Amazon earlier this month and just last week donated $200m to the renovation of the National Air and Space Museum.
Most of the $28m from the auction has been distributed to space advocacy and education groups, with the rest benefiting the Blue Origin Club for the Future, its own education effort.
Fewer than 600 people have reached the edge of space or beyond. As of Tuesday, the youngest was 25-year-old Soviet cosmonaut German Titov and the oldest was Mercury shuttle cosmonaut John Glenn, 77.
Both Bezos and Branson want to drastically increase those overall numbers, as does SpaceX. Elon Musk, which is skipping brief space hops and sending its private customers directly into orbit for tens of millions of people, with the first flight scheduled to arrive in September.
Despite appearances, Bezos and Branson insist they weren’t trying to outdo each other. Bezos noted this week that only one person can claim to be the first in space: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who rocketed into orbit on April 12, 1961.
“It’s not a competition, it’s about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space,” he said. NBC’s “Today”“
Blue Origin is working on a giant rocket, New Glenn, to put payloads and people into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The company wants to bring astronauts back to the Moon with its proposed lunar lander Blue Moon; It is challenging NASA’s only contract award to SpaceX.