- Jeff Bezos, the richest man on earth, will join a team of astronauts flying to space.
- Bezos’ mission was completed a few days after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson first entered space.
- The first crew launch will be carried out by Blue origin, which Bezos founded in 2000.
The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, will join the Astronaut Club on Tuesday for Blue Origin’s first manned launch, another key month for the emerging space tourism industry time.
The mission was carried out a few days after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson crossed the final border and narrowly defeated the Amazon tycoon in the battle of billionaires.
However, Blue Origin’s goals are set higher: the height to which its reusable new Shepard spacecraft will rise compared to Virgin’s space plane, and its future ambitions.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, with the goal of one day establishing a floating space colony with artificial gravity, where millions of people will work and live.
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Today, the company is developing a heavy-duty orbital rocket called New Glenn, and a lunar lander, and it hopes to contract with NASA under the Artemis plan.
Laura Forczyk, founder of the space consulting company Astralytical, told AFP: “They have successfully conducted 15 new Shepard unmanned flights. We have been waiting for years to see when they start. Manned flight.” She called this an “exciting moment.” “For lovers.
The New Shepard will be launched at 08:00 on July 20 from a remote facility called Launch Site One in the western Texas desert, which is located approximately 40 kilometers north of the nearest town, Van Horn.
The event will start live on BlueOrigin.com an hour and a half.
Richest, oldest and youngest
The fully automated flight with Bezos will be the barrier-breaking female pilot Wally Funk. She will become the oldest astronaut ever. The 82-year-old Dutch girl Oliver Damen (Oliver Damon) Daemen) is the company’s first paying customer, and he will become the youngest astronaut.
The four-member team is Jeff Bezos’ brother Mark, a financier who is responsible for managing the Bezos Family Foundation and serving as a volunteer firefighter.
The two are best friends, and Jeff shared the moment when he invited his younger brother and sister to join him in a video on Instagram last month.
The company said that it is worth noting that the mysterious winner auctioned a seat for $28 million. He has a “scheduling conflict” and will participate in future flights, and requested to remain anonymous.
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After lift-off, New Shepard will use a carbon-free liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine to accelerate into space at a speed exceeding Mach 3.
The capsule quickly separated from the booster, and the astronaut unbuttoned and began to experience weightlessness.
The astronaut will stay for a few minutes at an altitude of 100 kilometers beyond the Carmen Line (the internationally recognized boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space) because the spacecraft’s peak altitude is 106 kilometers.
They will be able to admire the curvature of the planet-and the jet black of the rest of the universe-from large windows that take up one-third of the surface area of the cabin.
The booster automatically returned to the landing station north of the launch site, while the space capsule returned to Earth in free fall, then deployed three huge parachutes, and finally deployed a thruster, gently landing in the desert of western Texas.
Bigger prizes
Apart from the first flight, little is known about Blue Origin’s future travel plans.
The company has a secret history, and its existence only became publicly known three years after its creation. It then pursued a “self-imposed silence” policy until 2015.
Unlike Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin has not officially started selling tickets yet-Daemen won his place through the auction process. It told AFP that the company hopes to add two more flights this year, and then “add more” in 2022.
Analyst Forczyk said that it all depends on the level of demand generated by these early flights and the degree to which the industry recovers from the accident. “This is unavoidable because space itself is risky.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX will join its Crew Dragon’s civilian orbital expedition in September and will visit the International Space Station in cooperation with another company, Axiom.
Forczyk said that in addition to the tourism industry, Blue Origin also hopes to replace SpaceX as NASA’s leading private sector partner, and sees New Shepard as “a kind of stepping stone and a way to make money for greater ambitions.”
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