Blue Origin Prepares For Historic First Human Flight Of Its New Shepard System

Officials at rocket company Blue Origin said they stay on track for their first manned space flight on Tuesday, which will carry founder Jeff Bezos and three other passengers on a suborbital jump 100 km above the west Texas.

Steve Lanias, the mission’s senior flight director, said on a call with reporters that engineers performed a “flight readiness exam” for launch over the weekend and found the rocket and the New Shepard capsule in perfect condition. The weather also appears reasonable with morning storms expected to pass before the scheduled take-off time of 8:00 a.m. CT (1:00 p.m. UTC).

Bezos and the other three passengers – his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and a paying customer from the Netherlands named Oliver Daemen – completed around 14 hours of training this weekend over two days. Their flight will be entirely autonomous. After launch, the capsule will separate from the rocket and passengers will have about three minutes of weightlessness before they have to reattach their seats for the return to Earth. Upon returning to Earth’s atmosphere, passengers will experience approximately 5 G as gravity exerts on the return vehicle.

This capsule and rocket have already made two flights, said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin. Although Blue Origin has a handful of former astronauts on its staff, the company decided to conduct its first flight with Bezos, his guests, and a client rather than having the vehicle tested by the former astronauts. “We didn’t see any value, quite frankly, in doing it in stages in this approach,” Smith said.

An anonymous bidder paid $ 28 million at an auction for a seat on that flight, but then withdrew due to scheduling conflicts, Blue Origin said. The company then turned to a finalist in the auction, Dutch hedge fund manager Joes Daemen. He paid an unspecified price for the seat of his son, Oliver.

Smith said 7,500 people from 150 countries participated in the Blue Origin auction for the New Shepard headquarters. The company has not disclosed how much it will charge for seats on New Shepard, but Blue Origin appears to be keen to get the price the market will bear, with seats on early flights set to cost well over $ 1 million. “The first flights are offered at a good price,” said Smith.

Blue Origin plans to perform two more customer flights in 2021, and although the company has not said so, it will likely complete a dozen such missions in 2022 as long as there are no significant technical issues. .

For Tuesday’s flight, the company will provide a webcast, which is expected to begin approximately 90 minutes before the scheduled take-off time. The webcast is therefore scheduled to go live at 6:30 a.m. local Texas time or around 11:30 a.m. UTC. The webcast will be incorporated into this story when a link is posted.