Bezos feels like a billion dollars
SPACE: RICHEST MAN, BROTHER, TEEN AND WOMAN SAFELY BACK
The anonymous winner of an auction for a seat had ‘scheduling conflicts’.
The wealthiest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, lifted off on his own rocket and reached outer space yesterday, a key moment for a fledgling industry seeking to make the final frontier accessible to elite tourists.
Blue Origin’s first crewed mission, an 11-minute hop from west Texas to beyond the Karman line and back again, coincided with the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing.
“It’s dark up here,” said barrier-breaking female aviator Wally Funk, 82, one of the four crew along with Bezos, his brother and 18-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen, now the youngest astronaut.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson made the voyage on 11 July, narrowly beating the
Amazon magnate in their battle of the billionaires.
But Blue Origin’s sights are set higher: both in the altitude to which its reusable New Shepard craft will ascend compared to Virgin’s spaceplane, but also in its ambitions.
Bezos, 57, founded Blue Origin 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.
Liftoff was slightly delayed from a remote facility in the west Texas desert called Launch Site One, 40km north of Van Horn.
Notably absent from the flight is the still anonymous winner of a $28 million (about R410 million) auction for a seat, who had “scheduling conflicts” and will take part in a future flight.
Daemen’s father, the CEO of a private equity firm, was a runner-up in the bidding, allowing his teenage son to become the company’s first paying customer.
After liftoff, New Shepard careened towards space at speeds exceeding 3 700km/h.
When it got high enough, the astronauts unbuckled and experienced weightlessness for three to four minutes.
The booster returned autonomously to a landing pad just north of its launch site, while the capsule fell back to earth with three giant parachutes for a gentle landing in the desert. –