When Blue Origin launches people into space for the first time, founder Jeff
Bezos will be on board. No test pilots or flight engineers for Tuesday’s
debut flight from West Texas, just Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old
aviation pioneer and a teenage tourist.
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.
Branson’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.”
Differences 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.
A brief look at what awaits Bezos and his passengers:
BEZOS ON BOARD
Bezos 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. Bezos
caught the space bug at age 5 while watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin’s moon landing on July, 20, 1969. He chose the 52nd anniversary for
his own launch. 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. 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. “To see the Earth from space,
it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with
humanity,” he said. “It’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life.”
WHO ELSE IS FLYING
Bezos personally invited two of his fellow passengers — his 50-year-old
brother Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter, and female aviation
pioneer Wally Funk. 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. At age 82, Funk will become the oldest person in space. 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. “Finally!" Funk exclaimed when offered a seat alongside
Bezos. 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. Blue Origin came calling just over a week ago,
after the unidentified auction winner switched to a later flight. The
teenage space fanatic, who starts college this fall, is Blue Origin's first
paying customer; no word on what his ticket cost.
ROCKET AND CAPSULE
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. He’s
also aiming higher, with an anticipated altitude of about 66 miles (106
kilometers) versus Branson's 53.5 miles (86 kilometers). 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. The passengers will experience three to
four minutes of weightlessness, before their capsule parachutes onto the
desert just 10 minutes after liftoff. That’s five minutes less than Alan
Shepard’s 1961 Mercury flight. Blue Origin, though, offers the biggest
windows ever built for a spacecraft. Bezos purchased the desolate, parched
land for launching and landing rockets. The closest town is Van Horn,
population 1,832.
TRACK RECORD
Blue Origin has completed 15 test flights to space since 2015, carrying up
experiments, children’s postcards and Mannequin Skywalker, the company’s
passenger stand-in. Except for the booster crash-landing on the first trip,
all the demos were successful. One rocket ended up flying seven times and
another five. The capsules also were recycled. Blue Origin deliberately
aborted a couple flights after liftoff to test the emergency escape system
on the capsule. The pace seemed slow compared with the competition, and many
wondered why Blue Origin — its motto Gradatim Ferociter, or step by step
ferociously — was taking so long to launch people. Based in Kent,
Washington, the company kept fairly mum on its launch plans. Bezos finally
announced “it’s time” following the last test flight in April, a dress
rehearsal that saw mock passengers briefly climb aboard before liftoff. The
rocket and capsule that will be used Tuesday have flown twice before.
WHAT’S NEXT
Blue Origin is expected to open ticket sales soon after Bezos flies and has
already lined up some of the other auction bidders. The company hasn't
disclosed the cost of a ride. The fourth seat on the upcoming flight was
auctioned off for $28 million. Nineteen space advocacy and education groups
are getting $1 million each as a result, with the rest to be used by Blue
Origin’s Club for the Future for its own education effort. While the
diminutive New Shepard is meant to launch people on brief flights to the
edge of space, the mega New Glenn will be capable of hauling cargo and
eventually crew into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, possibly beginning
late next year. Blue Origin also has its eyes on the moon. Its proposed
lunar lander, Blue Moon, lost to SpaceX’s Starship in NASA’s recent
commercial competition to develop the technology for getting the next
astronauts onto the moon. Blue Origin is challenging the contract award, as
is , the other competitor.
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Space & Astrophysics