The second commercial spaceflight mission is on schedule for takeoff Tuesday morning, marking the beginning of what billionaire passenger Jeff Bezos hopes to be a future filled with trips just like it.
Rocket company Blue Origin received full approval from the Federal Aviation Administration on July 12 to send its New Shepard vehicle and a four-person crew to space from a launch pad in West Texas on July 20 — 52 years to the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the moon.
The face of the mission, 57-year-old Blue Origin and Amazon founder Bezos, will be joined by his younger brother, 53-year-old Mark Bezos, as well as 82-year-old female aviation pioneer Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, on a trip he doesn’t expect to return from the same.
“Everybody who has been to space, every astronaut comes back and they say that it changed them somehow,” the elder Bezos told CNN’s New Day on Sunday. “So I don’t know how it’s going to change me, but I know it’s going to, and I’m excited to find out how.”
He said his goal is “having a mission where we can practice so much that we get really good at operational space travel.”
“If we can do that, then we’ll be building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there,” he said, suggesting that Daemen, who will be the youngest person ever in space, start his own space company to build on Blue Origin’s successes.
The launch will be the 16th for the New Shepard rocket, which was “100% successful” on its first mission on April 29, 2015, according to Gary Lai, the rocket’s senior design director.
For Tuesday’s mission, the crew will begin preparing the rocket at midnight for the launch, which is scheduled for 8:00 a.m. CDT, flight director Steve Lanius said at a press conference on Sunday. Fueling will begin three hours before launch, while the astronauts will board the vehicle 45 minutes before takeoff. The crew hatch will be closed 24 minutes prior to launch.
Our first human flight on Tuesday will be the 16th flight in #NewShepard’s history. Learn about the meticulous & rigorous launch program that brought us to this first step. Watch the launch live on https://t.co/7Y4TherpLr, starting at 6:30 am CDT / 11:30 UTC. #NSFirstHumanFlight pic.twitter.com/xWQRYLikZd
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 18, 2021
The autonomous New Shepard will attempt to take its passengers above the Karman line, which is 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles, above Earth.
Once the rocket reaches space, the crew’s capsule will detach from the rocket’s body, allowing the passengers to see Earth while feeling weightless. The module’s booster is then expected to return to Earth and land vertically, while the crew capsule is designed to float back to the surface using parachutes.
“I’ve waited a long time,” Funk, who trained for space flight with the Mercury 13 and will be the oldest person ever to see space, said of the opportunity. “I went to see [female astronaut Eileen Collins] three times on her launches. I kept thinking, ‘OK, NASA’s going to help me go up.’ It hasn’t happened, but we’re going to do it now.”
Tuesday’s launch will be the second commercial flight to space in July: British billionaire Richard Branson and three employees of his Virgin Galactic spaceflight company successfully reached space on Sunday, July 11, climbing to nearly 57 miles above Earth.
“Welcome to the dawn of a new space age,” Branson wrote upon his return.
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Bezos and company’s plan is to transcend their predecessors, a plan that was crafted meticulously and carefully, according to Bezos.
“We have taken this one step at a time,” he said when asked about the safety of the trip. “We’re ready.”
