SEATTLE – Rival Richard Branson may have beaten Jeff Bezos to space, but the millionaire American businessman is set to make history next week onboard the world’s first unpiloted suborbital trip with an all-civilian crew. On Tuesday, Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon.com Inc, will be part of a four-person crew for an 11-minute voyage to the edge of space in his company Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship, marking yet another milestone in the young but potentially profitable space tourism business.
He’ll be joined by his brother, private equity executive Mark Bezos, pioneering elderly woman aviator Wally Funk, and an as-yet-unidentified person who spent US$28 million for a seat on the spacecraft, which will launch from a West Texas site.
New Shepard is a 60-foot (18.3-meter) tall fully autonomous rocket-and-capsule combination that cannot be piloted from within the spacecraft. According to three people familiar with the company’s intentions, the crew will consist entirely of civilians, with no Blue Origin workers or staff astronauts. Nicholas Patrick, a NASA space shuttle veteran, is among Blue Origin’s astronauts. “Seeing the Earth from space transforms you, it changes your relationship with this planet, it changes your relationship with humanity,” Bezos said in a video last month about the voyage.
According to Teal Group space industry expert Marco Caceres, there has never been a fully autonomous suborbital or orbital flight with an all-civilian crew.
Branson, a British billionaire businessman, went on board Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane for its first suborbital trip from New Mexico on Sunday. Two pilots, as well as the company’s chief astronaut instructor and lead operations engineer, were on board the Virgin Galactic trip. Like traditional rocket launches, New Shepard takes off from a standing position on a launch pad. A rocket-powered spaceplane was dropped from a carrier plane in mid-flight by Virgin Galactic. New Shepard, like Virgin Galactic’s voyage, will not enter orbit around Earth, but will instead take passengers 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface before returning to Earth via parachute. Virgin Galactic’s mission soared 53 miles (86 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface.
Elon Musk’s space transportation company, SpaceX, is preparing an even more ambitious mission for September, sending an all-civilian crew into orbit on its Crew Dragon capsule for a several-day voyage.
‘SIMPLE MATH’ is a phrase that means “simple math.”
Blue Origin’s flight has taken two decades to complete. In the year 2000, Bezos created the corporation. Blue Origin officials adopted a pilotless craft as a financial strategy years ago. One of the people acquainted with the company’s thinking said, “It’s easy math.” “You can have more paying clients if you build a system that doesn’t require a pilot or a co-pilot.” Six individuals can sleep in New Shepard. Employees from Blue Origin and industry insiders have already considered climbing up on the maiden flight. A Blue Origin spokeswoman acknowledged that four seats were chosen to provide a better passenger experience on the maiden trip. The decision to bypass Blue Origin’s in-house astronauts and technical experts has enraged some company insiders, who saw the first crewed flight as a critical opportunity to gather data and technical feedback for a program in its early stages, as well as to evaluate the experience for future paying customers, according to the sources. According to the sources, a seasoned astronaut would provide a calming presence for civilian crew members as New Shepard blasts off at speeds of up to 2,200 miles (3,540 kilometers) per hour. Two days of training will be provided to the crew members. Blue Origin has assigned two ground crew members to assist passengers in securing their seats and to provide point-by-point instructions via headsets throughout the mission. “It’s like going on a roller coaster at an amusement park,” Caceres explained. “You just sit back and enjoy the ride, trusting that everything has been checked out and is in good working order.” Some industry sources have expressed concerns that passengers who are overwhelmed by the experience or in a euphoric state may be startled by routine noises, miss key instructions, pass out, or injure themselves floating around the cabin, all of which could be dangerous scenarios that a trained astronaut could respond to. Funk, who is 82 years old, was one of 13 women who passed the same stringent tests as Mercury. Seven male astronauts were considered for NASA’s space program in the 1960s but were denied due to their gender. Developing what Swiss investment bank UBS predicts could be a US$3 billion annual tourism business a decade from now would require proving the safety of space flight. “One of the key goals of the New Shepard mission is to show that suborbital space travel is entirely safe for the typical individual,” Caceres stated. “There is a benefit to having as many normal folks as possible on these flights” (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Will Dunham)/n
