After a spacewalk lasting just over ten minutes, the four space travelers on Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos' New Shepard spacecraft were back on the ground. "The best day ever," Bezos exclaimed after landing.
New Shepard lifted off at a quarter past two on Tuesday afternoon Swedish time, after a fifteen-minute delay.
On board were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk and 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen. The latter two became the oldest and youngest people in space, respectively.
The trip lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds. The highlight was the almost four minutes of weightlessness above the Kármán Line, which is usually considered the boundary of space.
After landing in West Texas, the travelers celebrated with champagne.
Wally Funk is one of the 13 women who were part of the Mercury 13 group, who were selected in the late 1950s and early 1960s to participate in private training that qualified them to become astronauts. However, the women were never allowed to practice the profession because of their gender.
And Tuesday's space trip gave me a taste for more. At a press conference after landing, Wally Funk declared that she wants to go into space again – and soon.
While Funk was invited by Bezos, Daemen became the first paying space tourist. It is not public how much he, or rather his father – multi-millionaire Joes Daemen – paid for the ticket. But it was not the Daemen family who were the secret winners of the auction in June, where someone paid the equivalent of 230 million kronor for a ticket and then withdrew due to a ”scheduling conflict”.
New Shepard has made 15 unmanned flights into space and countless safety tests, including emergency landings to be prepared for possible explosions.
The company hasn't revealed what's next, but two more flights are planned for this year and, according to CEO Bob Smith, "many more" in 2022.
And Blue Origin also has more high-flying plans, including developing a lunar lander that they hope NASA will use.
Bezos' Blue Origin, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's Space X are all vying to establish themselves in space tourism. But like Bezos, Branson says he doesn't see it as a race to be first.
Branson completed his spaceflight the other week. After Bezos landed, Branson sent his congratulations via Twitter and said the trip was impressive.
Source: TT
