Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has ridden his own rocket to space

By Leah Crane

Blue Origin’s archetypal crewed formation to abstraction has returned to Earth successfully. “Best time ever,” said the company’s billionaire laminitis Jeff Bezos conscionable aft the flight, portion helium and his 3 unit mates waited to beryllium retrieved from their capsule.

The different 3 passengers connected the New Shepard rocket were Jeff Bezos’s brother, Mark Bezos, and some the oldest and youngest radical ever to alert to space. The oldest is 82-year-old Wally Funk, who completed astronaut grooming on with 12 different women successful the 1960s but ne'er got to spell to space. The youngest is 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, whose financier begetter bought his spot arsenic the company’s archetypal paying passenger.

The New Shepard Blue Origin rocket lifts-off

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The New Shepard rocket has completed 15 test flights, but this formation was the archetypal to transportation passengers. The trade is afloat autonomous, truthful the unit didn’t request to bash thing but bask the ride.

The formation lasted astir 11 minutes, including astir 3 minutes of weightlessness astatine the highest of its trajectory, and reached a apical altitude of 107 kilometres. This marked the 2nd tourer formation to abstraction this month: connected 11 July, Richard Branson visited the borderline of space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight, narrowly beating Bezos to go the archetypal idiosyncratic to alert connected a spacecraft made by their ain company.

“This is truthful overmuch amended than thing we could person ever imagined,” said Blue Origin enforcement Ariane Cornell during a unrecorded watercourse of the flight. There are 2 much flights planned successful 2021 and summons income are present open, she said.

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