Their families were there to greet them, as well as Bezos’ girlfriend Lauren Sanchez. These space geeks had, essentially, won a Super Bowl. And then, one by one, the jubilant crew emerged, whooping and hollering. The whole trip had gone by in a flash, a space voyager’s Quibi.īlue Origin's recovery team raced their SUVs through the desert, fast-walking the last few yards to snap the hatch. The capsule, having slowed to a mere mile or two per hour, flopped on the desert floor, unleashing a wide puff of smoke. While the live feed didn’t give the thousands of online viewers real-time video, you could make out some of the audio that captured the joyous exclamations as the crew unbuckled and floated. Then the rocket jumped like a dart, sailing upwards until all that was left to see was a fuzzy contrail, a donut signifying the temporary hole in the sky that New Shepard had slipped through.Ībout three minutes later, the capsule, RSS First Step, separated from the rocket and pushed past the Earth’s atmosphere. “We have lift-off,” said the voice from the small mission control room on the base. The system passed through a final two minutes of checks, all done by an auto sequence, and then a voice from mission control began the countdown: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6 … command engines start, 2 1.”Īt 8:12 am, steam poured out of the bottom of the booster for a couple of seconds. The countdown proceeded with only a slight hold at 15 minutes then the count restarted. There had been some reports of possible rain, but the day was stunning and clear.
JEFF BEZOS BLUE ORIGIN ROCKET LAUNCH WINDOWS
They could watch the countdown from personal viewing screens on the sides of the large windows designed for a luxury view of the Earth and space. Bezos and his crew didn’t have any of that to worry about: New Shepard is completely AI-driven. The two previous suborbital NASA launches-60 years ago-involved a lot of checking gauges and flipping switches. At 7:43, Blue Origin technicians closed the hatch and climbed down from the gantry. Funk stuck a postcard of herself as a Mercury 13 candidate to her window, with plans to shoot a picture of it when she reached space. At 7:34, they entered the hatch and buckled themselves in. Then Bezos led the crew across a skybridge-each ringing a silver ceremonial bell as they crossed-to the capsule, which rests on New Shepard like, well, a sex toy. Original plans to accommodate a modest press contingent got jettisoned like a booster rocket, as the company invited dozens of reporters to its remote location in the West Texas desert, where Bezos owns over 300,000 acres and a mountain range.Īt 7:25 Central Daylight Time, on the company’s launch pad, the passengers climbed five flights of steps, scaling the height of the 160-foot New Shepard reusable rocket, pausing briefly inside an fireproof “astronaut safety shelter,” a tightly enclosed fireproof room that can be used in the event of an emergency evacuation. In the run-up to the flight, the normally press-shy company suddenly turned showbiz, releasing glossy videos and photos of the crew decked out in their bright blue jumpsuits. It began with a show of confidence, the crew bubbling with enthusiasm as they prepared, and ended in a jubilant celebration of the newly minted astronauts as they reunited with their loved ones after their brief time away.
Lasting only 10 minutes and 10 seconds, the flight seemed flawless, from launch to touchdown.
(He actually was an underbidder the unknown person who originally won the auction with a $28 million bid postponed their fight due to “scheduling difficulties.”) The latter two are now the oldest and youngest humans to sample space travel. Joining Bezos-and the ranks of the 580 people who have previously traveled to space-were his brother Mark, 53, a volunteer fireman and philanthropist who now runs an equity fund Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer who was denied a chance to become a Mercury astronaut because she was a woman and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student whose bid of millions won him the distinction of becoming Blue’s first paying customer.
He was the first passenger on New Shepard, the suborbital rocket system built by his company, Blue Origin. It took him a little over three minutes to achieve that altitude. Today, funded by the billions of dollars he made from that much-expanded company, Jeff Bezos traveled the most important 65 miles in his life: straight up, to the doorstep of space. Assuming a normal highway speed, they would have zipped past 65 mile markers every hour during their 2,500-mile journey. In 1994, Jeff Bezos and his then-wife, MacKenzie, drove from New York City to Seattle so he could start a new company to sell books on the internet.
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