Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company on Saturday flew its third private crew into space and brought it back safely, this time including the daughter of the first American astronaut. The stubby white spacecraft with a rounded tip, 62 miles (100 kilometers) high, blasted into the clear blue skies over West Texas for an approximately 11-minute journey beyond the internationally recognized boundary of space.
The six-man crew hooted with glee to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said an unidentified crew member as Blue Origin livestreamed the flight.
The capsule quickly returned to Earth thanks to a gentle parachute landing in the desert, kicking up as it touched down on a cloud of dust. Laura Shepard Churchley, whose father Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space in 1961, flew in as a guest of Blue Origin. The company’s suborbital rocket is actually named “New Shepard” in honor of the pioneering astronaut.
Michael Strahan, an American Football Hall of Famer-turned-TV personality, was also a guest, while there were four paying clients: space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Len Bass and Cameron Bess. . Lane and Cameron Bess became the first parent-child pair to fly into space. Ticket prices have not been disclosed.
Alan Shepard made a 15-minute suborbital space flight on May 5, 1961, just one month after Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union became the first human to orbit the planet. Shepard, who died in 1998, was the fifth of twelve men to set foot on the Moon. Previous Blue Origin flights have sent the company’s billionaire founder Bezos as well as Star Trek actor William Shatner into space.
Bezos, who made his fortune with the Amazon, envisions a future in which humanity is spread across the solar system, living and working in giant space colonies with artificial gravity. He says it would leave Earth as a pristine tourist destination like today’s national parks.
The year 2021 has been crucial for the space tourism sector, with Virgin Galactic also flying its founder Richard Branson to the end, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sending four private citizens on a three-day orbital mission to charity.
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