Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be flying to space next month. His brother Mark Bezos will accompany him on the first space flight launched by his rocket company Blue Origin. “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of travelling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother,” Bezos said in an Instagram post.
“To see the Earth from space, it changes you,” Bezos was saying in the video he shared on Instagram. “I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life.. It’s a big deal for me,” he added. He further said he had invited his brother on the space flight because he is his closest friend.
Jeff Bezos will fly to space with his brother
Bezos and his brother will join the winner of an online auction Blue Origin is currently hosting, which currently stands at $2.8 million as the highest bid for that seat. Bidding is underway now at BlueOrigin.com and concludes with a live online auction on June 12th. The winning bidder will fly to space on New Shepard’s first human flight on July 20th.
As per the company’s website, the winning bid amount will be donated to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and help invent the future of life in space.
The 11-minute trip and the unbeatable view of Earth
The New Shepard rocket doesn’t go all the way to orbit but instead flies to the edge of space, where passengers experience a few minutes of weightlessness and an unbeatable view of Earth through the capsules many windows, before returning to a parachute-assisted landing on the ground in Texas near Blue Origin’s launch site. New Shepard, the rocket company is targeting July 20 for its first sightseeing trip to space. The trip will last a total of 11 minutes, including the four minutes that passengers will spend above the Karman line. The Karman line marks the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
The New Shepard rocket-and-capsule combo is designed to autonomously fly six passengers more than 100 km above Earth into suborbital space.
Blue Origin has been flight testing New Shepard and its redundant safety systems since 2012. The program has had 15 successful consecutive missions including three successful escape tests, showing the crew escape system can activate safely in any phase of flight, ” the company claims on its website.
New Shepard has flown 15 successful consecutive missions to space and back above the Kármán Line through a meticulous and incremental flight program to test its multiple redundant safety systems. Now, it’s time for astronauts to climb onboard.
New Shepard launch vehicle
New Shepard is named after Alan Shepard to honour his historic flight. “Named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space, New Shepard is Blue Origin’s reusable suborbital rocket system designed to take astronauts and research payloads into space,” the company states.
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