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Now it's Jeff Bezos' turn to make history with his flight into space

2021-07-19T03:10:07.300Z


Everything is ready for the launch of the Blue Origin rocket to take place this Tuesday: it will be the first space flight with a civilian crew that will leave the Earth's atmosphere without a pilot.


By Denise Chow -

NBC News

Just over a week ago, Richard Branson traveled to the edge of space.

This week fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos is set to take a similar high-risk journey aboard his own rocket.

Bezos will attempt the space feat on Tuesday, July 20, in a rocket and capsule designed by Blue Origin, the private space company founded by the creator of Amazon.

It will be the first manned launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and,

absent

mishaps,

Bezos will make history by participating in the first pilotless suborbital flight with a civilian crew.

The expedition could set other important milestones, judging by the crew that will accompany Bezos:

the oldest and the youngest to reach space.

Billionaire Richard Branson fulfills his dream and reaches space in his own plane

July 11, 202102: 00

Wally Funk, 82, is a former test pilot and one of the first women to participate in the Mercury 13 space mission in the 1960s, which aimed to show that women could meet NASA standards for join the group of astronauts.

[Billionaire Richard Branson fulfills his dream and reaches space in his own plane]

On the other hand, the Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen could become the youngest astronaut in history at 18 years old.

The four-person team includes Mark Bezos, Jeff's brother.

"Since I was 5 years old, I dreamed of traveling to space,"

Bezos wrote on June 7 on his personal account of the social network Instagram, when he announced the trip.

“On July 20 I will make that trip with my brother.

The greatest of adventures, with my best friend ”.

The new New Shepard rocket will lift off from the West Texas desert, southeast of El Paso.

As it is a suborbital flight, the capsule will not go into orbit around the Earth, but will reach the edge of space, at an altitude of around 65 miles, where the crew will experience a lack of gravity for several minutes.   

Photo of the New Shepard rocket launch on an unmanned test flight in 2019. Courtesy Blue Origin

The capsule will then descend with a parachute set and land in the Texas desert

.

The entire trip is expected to take approximately 10 minutes.

The launch marks an important step for Blue Origin, which is committed to the future of expensive space travel.

The aerospace company expects to start a series of operational flights with paid crew members in the near future, and although it has not announced the price of individual tickets, they are expected to be around several hundred thousand dollars.

Bezos' attempt to reach space comes after Branson's July 11 trip aboard a vehicle developed by his private company, Virgin Galactic.

But unlike Virgin Galactic's Unity space plane,

the New Shepard rocket and capsule fly autonomously, with no pilots on board.

[An 18-year-old man will accompany Jeff Bezos into space and become the youngest astronaut in history]

The capsule of the Blue Origin spacecraft is also designed to reach a higher altitude than the Virgin Galactic vehicle.

The edge of space is often defined by the so-called Kármán line (boundary between atmosphere and outer space), at an estimated altitude of 100 kilometers above sea level.

Jeff Bezos in the communications room prior to one of the 2019 test launches of the New Shepard rocket.

Blue origin

While the New Shepard capsule will fly above the so-called Kármán line (over 62 miles), the Virgin Galactic spacecraft achieved only an altitude of around 53 miles during Branson's flight.

This discrepancy has been has fueled competition between the two rival billionaires.

As such, Blue Origin officials suggested that Virgin Galactic flights do not actually reach suborbital space.

However, Branson and his crew were eligible for the award from the Astronaut Wing Program because the Federal Aviation Administration and the United States Air Force recognize the 50-mile space limit.

A man pays $ 28 million to travel to space with Jeff Bezos

June 13, 202100: 22

Both the Branson and Bezos flights

could boost the space tourism industry

, which has so far progressed slowly over the past two decades, explained Marco Cáceres, a space industry analyst with Teal Group Corporation.

Civilians have paid before to participate in orbital flights to the International Space Station, yet all were launched aboard Soyuz rockets and capsules operated by the Russian Space Agency.

"For practical purposes,

we can say that the space tourism industry does not exist

at the moment. This officially marks the beginning," said Cáceres.

In addition to Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin suborbital excursions, Elon Musk's company SpaceX also wants to fly orbital sightseeing flights, with

the first mission to space with an all-civilian crew scheduled for this year

.

[Elon Musk presents Starship, the spacecraft with which he intends to take passengers to Mars in 2024]

According to Cáceres, all these tourism initiatives could turn into a lucrative sector of the commercial space flight industry, but it will probably take time.

"If it's about making a flight every certain month, it's

not enough to create an industry

. But if they are launched weekly, and you start seeing dozens or hundreds of these flights, that's when you can say that it is a reality," forecast.

Lowering the capsule of the New Shepard Courtesy Blue Origin

Branson, Bezos and Musk have faced backlash over their aspirations for private spaceflight, with some criticizing them

for investing in frivolous and selfish ventures

.

But such criticisms are shortsighted, according to Jim Cantrell, a former SpaceX executive and current CEO of Phantom Space, an Arizona-based startup that aims to build and launch commercial satellites.

"You can't see it in the context of this leap into space, but in the context of the big picture. All of this used to be dominated by the government, but we've gotten to the point where it's done individually.

That's the hopeful part. and inspiring of all this,

”said Cantrell.

Source: telemundo

All news articles on 2021-07-19

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