[ad_1]
After launching its own founder, Jeff Bezos, on the edge of space this summer, rocket company Blue Origin has moved on to its first famous client.
William Shatner, the actor best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in “Star Trek,” is expected to fly 62 miles above sea level aboard the company’s New Shepard launch system on Tuesday. He will share the spacecraft with former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, healthcare entrepreneur Glen de Vries and Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations Audrey Powers. The flight is automated, so no pilot will be on board.
At the height of their 11-minute flight, passengers will briefly experience weightlessness. They will be able to see the curvature of the Earth and its thin atmosphere against the darkness of space.
Shatner, who is 90, will be the oldest person to reach the limit of space, breaking the record set by aviator Wally Funk, 82, on Blue Origin’s first passenger flight with Bezos.
William Shatner, 90, is expected to fly to the edge of space on Tuesday.
AP Photo / Steven Senne
“I’m thrilled and anxious and a little nervous and a little scared with this brand new adventure,” Shatner told “The Today Show” Tuesday.
But the theft comes amid the fallout from a recent open letter from current and former Blue Origin employees. This essay called New Shepard’s safety into question, with some of the anonymous employees who signed it saying they would not fly on the rocket themselves.
Space flights have always been risky, but the private companies that now send people into space face little government oversight. Passengers like Shatner travel at their own risk.
Employees said ‘making progress for Jeff’ outweighed safety
Jeff Bezos holds Amelia Earhart’s aviation glasses up to his eyes after returning from his own flight to the edge of space.
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
New Shepard flew 16 times with no apparent errors – a solid record. But some Blue Origin employees said in the letter that things looked more concerning from the inside.
Alexandra Abrams, who previously led employee communications at Blue Origin, posted the letter on the Lioness site last week. Abrams was the only author named, but she said 20 other current and former Blue Origin employees co-wrote it. CBS News spoke to five of them, and two confirmed that they would not feel comfortable aboard a Blue Origin spacecraft.
“Competition with other billionaires – and ‘making progress for Jeff’ – seemed to take precedence over security concerns that would have slowed the schedule,” the letter said.
He continued: “Some of us felt that with the resources and personnel available, the leadership race to launch at such a blistering speed was seriously compromising flight safety.”
Jeff Bezos inspects a New Shepard rocket thruster after it lands after a test flight.
Blue Origin
The letter added that for many co-authors, security was “the driving force” behind the decision to publish it.
“In the opinion of an engineer who signed this essay, ‘Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far,'” the letter said. “A lot of the authors of this essay say they wouldn’t fly a Blue Origin vehicle.”
In an emailed statement to Insider, Blue Origin said, “We maintain our safety record and believe New Shepard is the safest spacecraft ever designed or built.”
The statement added that Abrams “was fired for cause two years ago after repeated warnings over issues involving federal export control regulations.” Abrams denied receiving any such warnings.
New Shepard has emergency safety devices
The New Shepard rocket thruster drops from the capsule above Earth.
Blue Origin
The hardest times in spaceflight are when the engines burn for takeoff, when the rocket separates from the capsule, and when the parachutes deploy on the way down.
Blue Origin didn’t share many details about their testing process, but they did highlight some of New Shepard’s security features.
After the New Shepard rocket takes off, it howls through the atmosphere for about three minutes before releasing the passenger capsule and falling back to Earth. Meanwhile, if something goes wrong, an emergency escape system should prompt the capsule to detach and move away from the impending disaster.
Blue Origin has tested this evacuation system three times – on the launch pad, in the air and in space. Presumably, this means that if the rocket threatens to explode, the capsule should be able to transport its passengers to safety.
The New Shepard crew capsule parachutes for a landing at Blue Origin Launch Site 1 in Texas, Jan. 14, 2021.
Blue Origin
Then once the capsule lands on Earth, three parachutes should deploy. If this fails, the capsule is designed to give more thrust to its downward facing motors. If two parachutes fail, a crushable “bumper” section at the bottom of the capsule should absorb the impact of the landing.
“The capsule is, in our opinion, the most redundant and safest space flight system that has ever been designed or flown,” said Gary Lai, senior design director at New Shepard, in a Blue Origin video on the security. “In most cases, you have a backup on the backup system.”
The capsule also has oxygen masks, much like on an airplane, in case the cabin is depressurized.
Blue Origin passengers travel at their own risk
A screenshot of the video recorded inside the New Shepard capsule shows (left to right) Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos and Wally Funk in microgravity.
Blue Origin
About 1% of human spaceflight in the United States resulted in a fatal crash, according to an analysis released earlier this year.
“That’s pretty high. It’s about 10,000 times more dangerous than flying on a commercial airliner,” George Nield, co-author of this report, told Insider. Nield was previously an associate administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and headed its Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
No federal agency regulates the safety of passengers on private commercial space flights. For now, the FAA is simply making sure that these rocket launches do not pose a threat to other planes or to people on the ground. However, in an emailed statement to Insider last week, the FAA said it was “reviewing” the open letter from Blue Origin employees.
[ad_2]
Source link