Everything is ready for the first manned launch of the New Shepard rocket by billionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of the space company Blue Origin and founder of Amazon. The flight is confirmed for Tuesday 20 July at 15:00 (Italian time) with 4 people on board, including 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, who will become the oldest and youngest space tourist.
"We have reviewed all of the vehicle's systems, including hardware, software, procedures and crew preparation. We are currently not working on any 'open issues' and New Shepard is ready to fly," said Blue Origin's flight director. Steve Lanius, during the last press conference.
The forecasts also bode well to give the definitive go-ahead to the first manned suborbital flight for the Blue Origin rocket, which intends to reach an altitude of about 100 kilometers making the crew experience the condition of microgravity, the same lack of weight they feel. astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS), for about three minutes.
The flight, a few days after the similar success obtained by Virgin Galactic with Richard Branson on board, takes place on the 52nd anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 landing on the moon.
July 20 is also the first commercial flight with men on board for Blue Origin, which has already announced that it has other customers: "We plan to do two more flights this year and many more in the future. We already have a list of customers. interested, "said Ariane Cornell, director of human flight sales at Blue Origin.
Unlike the Virgin Galactic flights whose recent tickets sold for $ 250,000, the cost for the Blue Origin ones is not known, the only data communicated was that one of the 4 seats of the inaugural launch had been auctioned for 28 million but the anonymous winner then had to withdraw for reasons of incompatibility of commitments, thus giving way to the young Daemen.
