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New York (CNN Business organisation)Jeff Bezos, the world's richest human being, went to infinite and back Tuesday morning time on an xi-minute, supersonic joy ride aboard the rocket and capsule system developed by his space visitor, Blue Origin.
Riding alongside the multibillionaire were Bezos' brother, Marking Bezos; Wally Funk, an 82-year-sometime airplane pilot and 1 of the "Mercury 13" women who trained to go to space in the 20th century but never got to fly; and an xviii-year old recent high school graduate named Oliver Daemen who was Blue Origin'due south first paying customer and whose father, an investor, purchased his ticket.
Funk and Daemen became the oldest and youngest people, respectively, ever to travel to space. And this flight marked the first-e'er crewed mission for Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital space tourism rocket, which the company plans to utilise to take wealthy thrill seekers on high-flying joy rides in the months and years to come.
The four passengers on Tuesday strapped into their New Shepard crew capsule at Bluish Origin'south launch site in rural West Texas just before the rocket lit its engines at viii:12 am CT, sending the vehicle blaring by the speed of audio and up to more than 65 miles above the desert landscape, topping out at an altitude of 351,210 feet. At the height of the flight path, the passengers were weightless for almost 3 minutes and were allowed to unstrap themselves from their seat to bladder effectually and soak in panoramic views of the Globe and the cosmos.
The launch was visible to reporters on the basis, with the rocket streaking across the almost cloudless Texas sky with a blooming contrail. The vivid blaze of the rocket engine looked near like a star or planet as it rose into the heaven. Bezos and crew could be heard on Blue Origin's livestream cheering as they moved about the capsule during the microgravity portion of the flying.
"Information technology's dark up here, oh my word!" Funk could be heard saying.
Bezos declared it "the best solar day e'er" on his communications check upon landing.
Why is Bezos doing this?
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, just vi years after he started Amazon, with the goal of making spaceflight more affordable and more than accessible. A few of his rivals in the industry — well-nigh notably Elon Musk and Richard Branson — both started their space ventures around the same time.
Though Bezos' extraterrestrial ambitions are lofty, involving spinning orbital space stations where people live and work, the suborbital New Shepard vehicle is the starting time fully operational piece of space hardware the company has developed.
And much like Branson and Virgin Galactic did simply nine days agone, Bezos decided to become one of the first people to ride on the space tourism spacecraft as a show of confidence in the vehicle's safety.
"We know the vehicle is safe," Bezos told CNN Business' Rachel Crane on Monday. "If it's non prophylactic for me, then it's non safe for anyone."
Who gets to fly on New Shepard?
Thus far, the reservations have been offered solely to participants in an auction that Blue Origin concluded final month. The winner, a mystery applicant who agreed to pay $28 million for a ticket, was expected to be on Tuesday's spaceflight, though the person made the surprise decision to reschedule for a afterwards mission because of "scheduling conflicts," according to the company.
Blueish Origin said information technology's planning to fly equally many as two other New Shepard rider flights this year. Merely the company has not given whatever indication of whether it will fix a public toll point for tickets, nor has it revealed how much Daemen, the Dutch eighteen-year-old who flew with Bezos, had to pay over for his seat. The company has stayed declined numerous requests for boosted information most ticket prices.
Just the visitor says the auction did give a stiff indication that in that location are plenty of people anxious to go: 7,600 people from 159 countries registered to participate in the bidding war.
What does this all hateful?
There's been plenty of blowback virtually billionaires in space, including a recent online petition that garnered more than than 162,000 signatures asking for Bezos never to render to Globe.
Bezos, who is worth about $200 billion, has funded the company almost solely out of his ain pocket. And repeated promises of benevolence and do good to a ravaged Earth has critics concerned that the ultra-wealthy view outer space as their own personal escape hatch.
Nonetheless, Blue Origin and other billionaire-backed space companies put out a lot of talk about their technologies paving the fashion toward a "democratization" of infinite in which everyday people — non just authorities-trained astronauts — get to feel the thrill of spaceflight. These early on suborbital space tourism flights volition be prohibitively expensive to the vast bulk of people, and that'southward non expected to modify anytime soon.
But this is how Blue Origin, even so, describes its long-term vision:
"Bluish Origin was founded past Jeff Bezos with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in infinite to benefit Globe. To preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will demand to expand, explore, find new free energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Bluish Origin is working on this today by developing partially and fully reusable launch vehicles that are safe, low cost, and serve the needs of all civil, commercial, and defense customers," the company said in a press release.
It'due south nevertheless early days, of course. The New Shepard rocket and capsule system is suborbital, meaning it doesn't drum up nearly enough energy to remain in infinite for more than a couple of minutes. But the company is working on a much larger rocket for that purpose — called New Glenn — and a lunar lander that information technology hopes will be used to support NASA missions.
Bezos has also talked in the past about "O'Neill colonies," a concept for spinning space stations that can mimic Earth-like gravity for passengers, being as a possible habitat for future space dwellers.
Who volition own the space stations? And will passengers be employees or tourists? Volition space travel, if necessary to save humanity, only be available to those who can afford to pay? And is Bezos' time and money amend spent trying to solve Earthly problems rather than seeking to escape them?
We don't know. In that location are enough of unanswered questions and raging debates.
CNN's Rachel Crane asked Bezos about the pushback on Mon.
"They are largely right," Bezos said of critics who say billionaires should focus their energy — and coin — on issues closer to domicile. "We have to practise both. We have lots of problems here and at present on Earth and we need to work on those, and we ever demand to wait to the future. We've always done that as a species, every bit a civilization."
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/20/tech/jeff-bezos-blue-origin-launch-scn/index.html