Astro: Lousy view from Jeff’s flight
Wally Funk is giving Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight a twostar review.
The 82-year-old passenger on Tuesday’s Blue Origin mission enthusiastically thanked the billionaire for the ride, but the trailblazing former NASA trainee also offered some less-than-stellar comments on the 11-minute trip.
“We went right on up and I saw darkness. I thought I was going to see the world, but we weren’t quite high enough,” said Funk, who’s now the oldest person to travel to space.
While the suborbital Blue Origin flight went about 10 miles higher than rival Virgin Galactic’s, footage from onboard the flight’s passenger capsule shows what Funk’s talking about.
The passengers could see Earth through the windows of the capsule, but it was a far cry from the Pale Blue Dot that has been pictured from deep in outer space.
And the view from onboard the Blue Origin flight couldn’t quite match the images taken from the International Space Station, which orbits at an altitude four times higher than Blue Origin did.
In the footage shared by Blue Origin, passengers appear to be able to see the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere and a bit of curve in the horizon as well as the blackness of space, but as Funk put it, it’s not quite enough to see the whole world in one view.
Additionally, Funk added at the post-flight press conference, she would have liked to have spent longer in zero gravity on the flight to “do a lot more rolls and twists and so forth.
“But there was not quite enough room for all four of us to do all those things.”
While Funk can be heard on the footage from the cabin saying “I love it,” the space does appear tight.
The capsule is designed to carry six passengers, although this flight carried just four. The footage shows the crew bumping into each other and struggling to somersault through the air.
Funk’s other critique was that she wishes the trip could have been longer.
“I loved every minute of it,” she said. “I just wish it had been longer.”
Less than 10 minutes after blastoff, the rocket’s capsule separated from its reusable booster, allowing the crew to enjoy just a few minutes of weightlessness before parachuting back to the ground.