![]() ![]() The passengers will experience three to four minutes of weightlessness, before their capsule parachutes onto the desert just 10 minutes after liftoff. Blue Origin’s 60-foot (18-meter) New Shepard rocket will accelerate toward space at three times the speed of sound, or Mach 3, before separating from the capsule and returning for an upright landing. He’s also aiming higher, with an anticipated altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers) versus Branson’s 53.5 miles (86 kilometers). While Bezos won’t be the first boss to ride to space on his own rocket, he can lay claim to strapping in for his company’s first human launch. The teenage space fanatic, who starts college this fall, is Blue Origin’s first paying customer no word on what his ticket cost. Blue Origin came calling just over a week ago, after the unidentified auction winner switched to a later flight. As for the Dutch Daemen - who at 18 will become the youngest person in space - his financier father bid on the capsule seat in June, but dropped out when the price soared. ![]() “Finally!” Funk exclaimed when offered a seat alongside Bezos. She was among 13 female pilots - the so-called Mercury 13 - who took the same tests in the early 1960s as NASA’s Mercury 7 astronauts, but were barred because of their gender. At age 82, Funk will become the oldest person in space. Joining them will be Oliver Daemen, a last-minute fill-in for the winner of a $28 million charity auction who had a scheduling conflict. ![]() “It’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life.”īezos personally invited two of his fellow passengers - his 50-year-old brother Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter, and female aviation pioneer Wally Funk. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity,” he said. “To see the Earth from space, it changes you. The 57-year-old Bezos - who also owns The Washington Post - stepped down as Amazon’s CEO earlier this month and last week donated $200 million to the Smithsonian Institution to renovate its National Air and Space Museum and launch an education center. ![]() Enamored by space history, Bezos named his New Shepard rocket after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and his bigger, still-in-development New Glenn rocket after John Glenn, the first American in orbit. He chose the 52nd anniversary for his own launch. Bezos caught the space bug at age 5 while watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing on July, 20, 1969. The capsule is entirely automated, unlike Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane that required two pilots to get him to space and back a week ago.īranson’s advice? “Just sit back, relax, look out of the window, just absorb the view outside,” he said on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”ĭifferences in quirks and rockets aside, the billionaire rivals are gearing up to launch just about anybody willing to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brief up-and-down space hop.Ī brief look at what awaits Bezos and his passengers:īezos created Blue Origin in 2000, a move that he said prompted his high school girlfriend to observe, “Jeff started Amazon just to get enough money to do Blue Origin - and I can’t prove her wrong.” He has said he finances the rocket company by selling $1 billion in Amazon stock a year.
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