Blue Origin efficiently launches oldest and youngest particular person to ever flew into house (oh, and Jeff Bezos too)

On the anniversary of the first moon landing, Blue Origin became the second commercial space company in just nine days to send people just over the edge of space. During the seemingly flawless 10-minute and 10-second flight, the four passengers aboard the New Shepard rocket cheered with joy and serenity. The crew included Blue Origin and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, and the oldest and youngest people to have ever flown into space.

Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneer pilot and member of the so-called “Mercury 13” astronaut hopefuls, made the flight together with Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch physics student.

Bezos and Blue Origin’s flight comes after space billionaire Richard Branson launched his own Virgin Galactic rocket on July 11th.

“Blue control, Bezos. Best day ever! “Bezos said during the flight with an almost constant chatter of the crew that could be heard during the live webcast.” You have a very happy crew up here! “

Screenshot from the Blue Origin webcast of the New Shepard rocket launch on July 20, 2021.

The New Shepard vehicle took off just after 8 a.m. CT from the company’s facilities in Van Horn, Texas. The crew had about four minutes of weightlessness during the flight. The suborbital mission passed the Karman Line, the point 100 km (62 miles) above the surface of the earth at which some international organizations are considering where space begins.

The booster missile made a smooth, vertical landing approximately seven minutes after takeoff. A few minutes later, the capsule and the crew landed relatively gently, with parachutes and retro rockets cushioning. The cheering crew stepped out of the capsule and embraced family and friends in hugs and champagne.

Blue Origin tweeted the stats for the flight:

Key mission stats from #NSFirstHumanFlight:

Apogee of the crew capsule: 347,563 ft AGL / 351,210 ft MSL (105 km AGL / 107 km MSL)

Booster apogee: 347,188 ft AGL / 350,835 ft MSL (105 km AGL / 106 km MSL)

Elapsed Mission Time: 10:10

Max Ascent Speed: 2,233 mph (3,595 km / h)

– Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 20, 2021

While Bezos may have made billionaire history, the real winner of the flight was funk. From 1960-1961, Funk was a member of thirteen women who called themselves First Lady Astronaut Trainees, FLATs. (The term Mercury 13 was coined for a documentary in the 1980s.) The thirteen female pilots underwent many of the same medical tests and training as the male astronauts selected for NASA’s Mercury program. These women were all seasoned pilots who performed better than their male counterparts in some aspects of their training and (in some cases) even had more flight time. Funk was at the top of its class, outperforming the male astronauts in every category, but never got into space. Bezos’ decision to include Funk on the flight was widely praised.

The 18-year-old Daemen’s seat was paid for by his father and he was named to the crew after the winner of an anonymous $ 28 million auction for the flight was postponed due to a scheduling conflict.

While Blue Origin’s company motto is “Gradatim Ferociter”, Latin for “step by step wild,” Bezos suddenly decided to forego the gradual test flights with the astronauts on their payroll and announced in May of this year that he was sitting down and his brother on the first flight.

While today’s successful flight was a huge triumph, the debate still remains whether the Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic flights are a dawn of breakthroughs opening space for all, or just a harbinger of suborbital spraying flights for the rich are.

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