How will Jeff Bezos from Blue Origin fly into space

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – When Blue Origin launches people into space for the first time, founder Jeff Bezos will be on board. There are no test pilots or flight engineers for Tuesday’s first flight from West Texas, only Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old pilot and a teenage tourist.

The capsule is fully automated, unlike Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane that required two pilots to get it into space and back a week earlier.

Branson’s advice? “Just sit back and relax, look out the window, and just take in the outside view,” he said on CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Regardless of the differences in quirks and rockets, billionaire competitors are poised to launch anyone willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for a short space hop.

A quick look at what awaits Bezos and his passengers:

Bezos on the plane

Bezos created Blue Origin in 2000, a move he said prompted his high school girlfriend to remark, “Jeff started at Amazon to get enough money to do Blue Origin — and I can’t prove her wrong.” He said he funds the rocket company by selling $1 billion in Amazon stock annually. Bezos caught the space bug at the age of five while watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing on July 20, 1969. He chose the 52nd anniversary of his launch himself. Fascinated by the history of space, Bezos named his new Shepherd rocket after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and his largest rocket, still in development, after John Glenn, the first American in orbit. The 57-year-old Bezos — who also owns The Washington Post — resigned as CEO of Amazon earlier this month, and last week donated $200 million to the Smithsonian Institution to renovate the National Air and Space Museum and launch an educational center. “Seeing Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship to this planet, with humanity. It’s something I’ve wanted to do all my life.”

Who fly last

Bezos personally invited two of his fellow passengers – his 50-year-old brother Mark, investor and volunteer firefighter, and aviation pioneer Wally Funk. They will be joined by Oliver Damon, another last-minute event for the winner of a $28 million charity auction who had a scheduling conflict. At the age of 82, Funk will become the oldest person in space. She was among 13 pilots – the so-called Mercury 13 – who performed the same tests in the early 1960s as NASA’s Mercury 7 astronauts, but were barred because of their gender. “finally!” Funk shouted when he was offered a seat next to Bezos. As for Dutch Daemen – who will become the youngest person in space at 18 – his financier father made an offer on a capsule seat in June, but pulled out when the price rose. Blue Origin was contacted a little over a week ago, after the anonymous auction winner switched to a later flight. The teenage space fanatic, who started college this fall, is the first paying customer for Blue Origin; No word on the cost of his ticket.

missile and capsule

While Bezos won’t be the first president to ride into space on his own rocket, he can claim to be carrying his company’s first human launch. It also aspires to a higher altitude, with a projected altitude of about 66 miles (106 km) versus Branson’s 53.5 miles (86 km). Blue Origin’s 60-foot (18 m) New Shepard rocket will accelerate toward space at three times the speed of sound, or Mach 3, before detaching from the capsule and returning to land upright. Passengers will experience three to four minutes of weightlessness, before the capsule parachutes into the desert just 10 minutes after takeoff. That’s five minutes less than Alan Shepard’s 1961 Mercury flight. Despite this, Blue Origin offers the largest windows ever built for a spacecraft. Bezos bought the thirsty wasteland to launch and land missiles. The nearest town is Van Horn, with a population of 1,832.

Record

Blue Origin has completed 15 test flights into space since 2015, carrying out experiments, postcards for kids, and the Mannequin Skywalker, the company’s passenger platform. With the exception of the crash of the booster on the first flight, all test performances were successful. The missile ended up flying seven times and five more times. The capsules were also recycled. Blue Origin deliberately aborted two flights after takeoff to test the emergency escape system on the capsule. The pace seemed sluggish compared to the competition, and many questioned why Blue Origin – its Gradatim Ferociter logo, or ferociously step-by-step – took so long to fire people. Based in Kent, Washington, the company has kept somewhat silent about its launch plans. Bezos finally declared “it’s about time” after his last test flight in April, a rehearsal that saw mock passengers briefly board the plane before takeoff.

What’s Next

Blue Origin is expected to open ticket sales shortly after Bezos’ flight. There is no immediate information on the cost of the trips. The fourth seat on the upcoming flight was auctioned for $28 million. Nineteen aerospace advocacy and education groups received $1 million each as a result, and the remainder will be used by the Blue Origin Club for the Future for its own educational efforts. While the tiny New Shepard aims to launch people on short trips to the edge of space, the giant New Glenn will eventually be able to carry cargo and crew into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, possibly beginning late next year. Blue Origin also has its eyes on the moon. A proposed lunar lander, Blue Moon, lost to SpaceX’s Starship in a recent NASA commercial competition to develop the technology needed to get the next astronauts to the moon. Blue Origin is challenging contract award, as is Dynetics, another contender.

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The Associated Press’s Department of Health and Science receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Education. AP is solely responsible for all content.

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