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As Jeff Bezos and his three teammates completed a two-day “astronaut” training course, engineers provisionally cleared their New Shepard rocket and capsule on Sunday for take-off on Tuesday on a 10-minute flight up and down to the edge. from space, corresponding rival Richard Branson’s achievement nine days earlier.
Blue Origin, the Bezos space company founded two decades ago, plans to launch the company’s New Shepard rocket and crew capsule from its flight facility in West Texas at 9 a.m. EDT on Tuesday.
Takeoff will mark the 16th flight of a New Shepard spacecraft, but the first with passengers on board. Joining Amazon founder Bezos will be his brother, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Mark Wally funk and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutchman who is Blue Origin’s first paying customer.
Blue origin
“We looked at all of the vehicle’s systems, including the launch team’s hardware, software, procedures and preparation,” Blue Origin launch director Steve Lanius said on Sunday. “We are not currently working on any open issues and New Shepard is ready to fly.”
Forecasters expect a risk of thunderstorms early in the morning, but Lanius said he expects conditions to be favorable at the time of launch.
Bezos and his teammates complete a two-day training program to familiarize themselves with the New Shepard crew capsule, combining classroom work and procedural reviews using a spaceship simulator.
Unlike Branson’s Virgin Galactic space plane, which is manually flown by professional pilots, New Shepard is fully automated.
There are no pilots or flight controls on board, and while passengers don’t need the kind of in-depth training professional astronauts go through, the company’s trainers want to make sure they understand what to expect, from the acceleration of powered flight to the brief period of weightlessness they will enjoy before returning to Earth.
“Our training is comprehensive and prepares the crew for everything they need to know about the vehicle,” Lanius said, adding that the training meets the requirements set by the Federal Aviation Administration. “It consists of 14 hours over a two-day period and includes classroom instruction, demonstrations and exercises in a training capsule.
“The training covers nominal, non-nominal and emergency procedures, including exit and entry from the zero-G seat, emergency exit and response to fire and the use of a emergency breathing mask. The training ends with mission rehearsals covering five different scenarios and a final exam.
Based on training with replacement astronauts, “we are fully confident that our astronauts will be ready to fly on Tuesday”.
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