Bezos takes oldest, youngest to space

VAN HORN: Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person, soared 107km above the Texas desert aboard his company Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle yesterday and returned safely to Earth in a historic suborbital flight that helps usher in a new era of space tourism.

‘‘Best day ever,’’ said Bezos, accompanied by three crewmates including the world’s oldest and youngest space travellers, after his capsule descended with three large parachutes and touched down, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The 57yearold United States billionaire, donning a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, took a trip to the edge of space lasting 10 minutes and 10 seconds. After landing, Bezos and his crewmates exchanged hugs and popped Champagne while about two dozen family members and company employees cheered.

‘‘Astronaut Bezos in my seat — happy, happy, happy,’’ Bezos told mission control during a safety check after the passengers buckled back in following a few minutes of weightlessness in space.

The fully autonomous 18.3mtall gleaming white spacecraft, with a feather design on its side, ignited its BE3 engine for a vertical liftoff from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One facility about 32 km outside the rural town of Van Horn, under mostly clear skies.

Bezos, founder of ecommerce company Amazon.com Inc, and his brother Mark Bezos, a private equity executive, were joined by two others. Pioneering woman aviator

Wally Funk (82) and recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen (18) became the oldest and youngest people to reach space.

‘‘I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this,’’ Bezos said.

The flight came nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism venture Virgin

Galactic’s suborbital flight from New Mexico. The flights give credibility and inject enthusiasm into to the fledgling commercial space tourism industry, which bank UBS estimates will be worth $3 billion a year within a decade.

Bezos, who founded Blue Origin in 2000, said this first crewed space flight was a step towards developing a fleet of reusable spacecraft. — Reuters

PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES Lifting off . . . Blue Origin’s New Shepard ascends from Van Horn, Texas, yesterday, carrying Jeff Bezos along with his brother, Mark Bezos, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk.

PHOTO: REUTERS Home safe . . . American billionaire Jeff Bezos shakes hands with Wally Funk, who became the oldest person in space with other crew mates Oliver Daemen (left) and Mark Bezos at a postlaunch media conference in Van Horn, Texas, yesterday.