Jeff Bezos and three other astronauts returned to Earth after blasting into space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket spaceship.
Jeff Bezos’ brother, Mark Bezos, pilot Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen are the other astronauts.
Bezos and the three other astronauts left Earth aboard the rocket at around 2: 12 pm on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.
They safely returned to earth after their capsule reached an altitude of 351, 210 feet (66.517 miles).
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Their rocket lifted off at 2: 12 pm Nigerian time (09:12 EDT) from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.
After about 11 minutes, they parachuted back and touched down at the West Texas desert.
Duration of flight:
Wally Funk is an 82-year-old pioneer of the space race and a pilot. Oliver Daemen is 18-years old.
While Oliver Daemen is the youngest person to ever go to space, Wally Funk today became the oldest astronaut to go to space.
Daemen is the son of Joes Daemen who founded Dutch private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners.
Joes is a billionaire too.
The New Shepherd is the first human crewed flight and built by a company founded by Bezos himself.
Blue Origin took months and years to specially design the Shepherd rocket to carry out the mission and for space tourisms.
The spaceship has a capsule with the biggest windows ever that a human spaceship has ever had.
The windows provided stunning views of the Earth.
How the flight went:
Bezos and the other astronauts had a beautiful view of the earth from above.
The capsule with big windows separated from the rocket and continued flying up about two minutes into the flight to space.
Their capsule headed towards the Karman Line, a boundary of space 100km up in the space.
At that altitude, Bezos and other crew members felt no gravity force and so, became weightless for about four minutes.
At this point, they unstrapped from their seats to float in the non-gravitational air.
While up in the air, Bezos said, “Wally can outrun all of us.”
“During the Mercury 13, she was better than all the men and I can guarantee that’s still true today.”
Also, Bezos’brother, Mark said after they touched down, “I am unbelievably good.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Funk who was among the group of women called the Mercury 13.
She underwent training for space in 1960s but did not make it to space then.
She exclaimed today, “Oh my word, look at the world.”
Jeff Bezos also said when their capsule touched down earth that, today is the “best day ever,” in his life.
Bezos came out of the capsule wearing his cowboy hat.
Interestingly, the struggle to land in space has sparked a trend many have dubbed the “Billionaires Space Race.”
Bezos is the second billionaire to land in space this month, as the first billionaire in the tussle was Sir Richard Branson.
Do you want to go to space? Here is what to do:
Blue Origin has announced space flight tickets for sale. .
Blue Origin announced it is open for ticket sales as more people watched the successful launch today.
Also, the announcement followed the number of people who bided to go to space today.
While 7,600 people from 159 countries registered to bid for the space travel, the four are the first batch to have visited space.
It announced after the successful launch today saying thus:
“We are selling tickets. Obviously, the first ticket was done via auction but we are chatting with our customers that participated in that auction. But if anybody’s interested, send us an email — astronauts@blueorigin.com — and we’ll have a conversation, because we want to get people up to space and get them up there soon,” Blue Origin’s head of sales, Ariane Cornell, told CNN Business’ Rachel Crane.”
