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Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, is expected to join the Astronaut Club on Tuesday during the first crewed launch of Blue Origin, another key moment in an important month for the nascent space tourism industry.
The mission comes days after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson crossed the last frontier, narrowly defeating the Amazon mogul in his battle against billionaires.
Blue Origin’s goals are set higher, however: both literally in terms of the altitude at which its reusable New Shepard ship will climb relative to Virgin’s spaceplane, but also in its future ambitions.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live.
The New Shepard booster on the airstrip, April 14, 2021 (Blue Origin)
Today, the company is developing a heavy-lift orbital rocket called New Glenn and also a lunar lander that it hopes to contract out to NASA as part of the Artemis program.
“They’ve made 15 unmanned flights to New Shepard and we’ve been waiting for years to see when they’re going to start flying people,” Laura Forczyk, founder of space consultancy Astralytical, told AFP. “exciting period”. “for enthusiasts.
How to watch
New Shepard will take off on July 20 at 8 a.m. central time (1 p.m. GMT) from a remote facility in the West Texas desert called Launch Site One, about 25 miles north of the nearest town, Van Horn.
The event will be broadcast live on BlueOrigin.com from an hour and a half before.
The richest, the oldest and the youngest
Aviator Wally Funk, who at 82 is expected to be the oldest astronaut ever, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, the company’s first paying client, who will become the youngest astronaut, will join Bezos on the fully autonomous flight.
The four-member crew is complemented by Jeff Bezos’ brother Mark, a financier who runs the Bezos Family Foundation and works as a volunteer firefighter.
The couple are best friends and Jeff shared the moment he asked his younger brother to join him in a viral Instagram video last month.
Notably absent is the mysterious winner of a $ 28 million seat auction, which has had “scheduling conflicts” and will participate in a future flight, and has requested to remain anonymous, the company said.
After take-off, New Shepard will accelerate into space at speeds exceeding Mach 3 using a carbon-free liquid hydrogen / liquid oxygen engine.
The capsule soon separates from its booster, and the astronauts unbuckle and begin to feel weightless.
The crew will spend a few minutes beyond the Karman Line – the internationally recognized border between Earth’s atmosphere and space, 62 miles above sea level (100 kilometers), as the spacecraft peaks at 65 miles high. (106 kilometers).
They will be able to admire the curvature of the planet – and the inky blackness of the rest of the universe – from large windows that make up a third of the cabin’s surface.
The booster returns autonomously to a landing pad just north of its launch site, while the capsule falls back to Earth before deploying three giant parachutes, and finally a thruster, to land smoothly in the desert of the west Texas.
Higher prices
Beyond the first flight, relatively little is known about Blue Origin’s future tourism plans.
The company has a history of secrecy, its existence not being known to the public until three years after its creation. He then pursued a policy of “self-imposed silence” until 2015.
Unlike Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin hasn’t officially started selling tickets – Daemen has earned its spot through the auction process. The company wants two more flights this year, then “much more” in 2022, she told AFP.
Forczyk, the analyst, said it would all depend on the level of demand generated by these early flights and the industry’s ability to recover from accidents “which will inevitably occur because space flights are inherently risky.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will enter the fray in September with an all-civilian orbital expedition on his Crew Dragon, and is teaming up with another company, Axiom, for visits to the International Space Station.
Beyond tourism, Blue Origin would like to supplant SpaceX as NASA’s main private sector partner, and sees New Shepard as “a kind of stepping stone and also a way to make money along the way for more. great ambition, ”said Forczyk.
Who’s Who on Blue Origin’s First Crewed Flight:
Blue Origin’s first crewed flight on Tuesday involves four people who will cross the Karman Line, which separates Earth’s atmosphere from space, for the very first time.
Here’s a quick look at the quartet of future astronauts.
The tycoon, Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, 57, will leave behind the planet where he made his fortune for a few minutes on a spaceship built by the company he founded in 2000, when he was still a single-digit billionaire .
Six years earlier, he had opened a small online bookstore called Amazon.com in his garage. Bezos’ net worth is now estimated to be over $ 200 billion.
The brother, Mark Bezos
Jeff Bezos invited his brother Mark, a financier who runs the Bezos Family Foundation and works as a volunteer firefighter.
The couple are best friends, and Jeff shared the moment he surprised his brother, six years younger, by asking him to join the mission in a video that went viral on Instagram last month.
The pioneer Wally Funk
At 82, barrier-breaking aviator Wally Funk is set to become the oldest astronaut of all time, fulfilling a lifelong dream that was thwarted by the sexism of the first space age.
Funk, who took his first flying lesson at age nine, excelled in Project Mercury 13 which aimed to train women for space using the same standards as male astronauts, but the program ultimately succeeded been canceled.
She nevertheless had an accomplished career in aviation, becoming the first female aviation safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board and served as chief pilot at several flight schools.
Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen
Oliver Daemen, 18, is set to become the youngest astronaut. He holds a private pilot’s license and is an avid space enthusiast who will be studying physics at university this fall.
The Dutch teenager steals in place of the still anonymous winner of a $ 28 million public auction, who has asked to pass this time around due to “scheduling conflicts”, and will make a subsequent trip.
Daemen’s ticket was paid for by his father, the CEO of a private equity firm, CNBC reported.
© Agence France-Presse
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