After Branson, Bezos fastens seat belt for space odyssey

WASHINGTON: Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, is set to join the astronaut club on Tuesday on the first crewed launch by Blue Origin, another key moment in a big month for the fledgling space tourism industry.

The mission comes days after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson crossed the final frontier, narrowly besting the Amazon magnate in their battle of the billionaires.

Blue Origin’s sights are, however, set higher: both literally in terms of the altitude to which its reusable New Shepard craft will ascend compared to Virgin’s spaceplane, but also in its future ambitions.

Bezos founded Blue Origin back in 2000, with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live.

Today, the company is developing a heavy-lift orbital rocket called New Glenn and also a Moon lander it is hoping to contract to Nasa under the Artemis programme. “They’ve had 15 successful New Shepard uncrewed flights and we’ve been waiting years to see when they’re going to start flying people,” Laura Forczyk, founder of space consulting firm Astralytical, said, calling it an “exciting time” for enthusiasts.

New Shepard will blast off at 8am Central Time (1300 GMT) on July 20 from a facility in the west Texas desert called Launch Site One, some 40km north of the nearest town, Van Horn. The event will be live streamed on BlueOrigin.com beginning an hour and a half before.

Joining Bezos on the flight will be barrier-breaking female aviator Wally Funk, who at 82 is set to be the oldest ever astronaut, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, the company’s first paying customer, who will become the youngest astronaut. Rounding out the fourmember crew is Bezos’ brother Mark, a financier who directs the Bezos Family Foundation and works as a volunteer firefighter.