New Shepard ready for launch
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship sits on its pad in preparation for a test flight in 2018. (Blue Origin Photo)

UPDATE: ‘Best day ever!’ Blue Origin sends Jeff Bezos on suborbital trip with oldest and youngest spacefliers

Original story: VAN HORN, Texas — More than two decades after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos created Blue Origin, his privately held space company is finally sending people on a suborbital space trip — and one of those people is Bezos himself.

How are Bezos and his three crewmates traveling? How can you see how it all turns out? And why the heck is the world’s richest person riding a rocket ship? Here’s a quick guide to this morning’s scheduled launch of Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship from Launch Site One, located on 165,000 acres of Bezos-owned ranchland that’s a half-hour drive north of Van Horn in West Texas.

What to watch for

The New Shepard rocket ship is scheduled to blast off from Launch Site One’s pad at 8 a.m. CT (6 a.m. PT), with Bezos and the rest of the crew sitting back in their seats, looking through the picture windows in their capsule as a hydrogen-fueled rocket booster sends them skyward.

About two and a half minutes after liftoff, the booster will stop firing its engines, and the capsule will separate from the booster to continue past 100 kilometers (62 miles) in altitude. During that phase of the flight, crew members can get out of their seats and float around for three or four minutes. Then they’ll return to their seats for a parachute-aided descent back to the Texas desert.

In the meantime, the booster will make an autonomous landing on a pad located at a safe distance from the capsule’s touchdown zone. After the crew lands, Blue Origin’s recovery team will drive out and help the foursome out of the capsule.

This infographic traces the phases of New Shepard’s flight. Click on the image for a larger version. (Blue Origin Graphic)

Where to watch

Blue Origin is streaming live coverage of the countdown via BlueOrigin.com and YouTube, counting down to the 8 a.m. CT (6 a.m. PT) launch. Last-minute technical glitches or weather concerns could delay liftoff.

Access to the launch site and its surroundings will be extremely limited. The stretch of Texas State Highway 54 leading to Launch Site One from the north and the south will be closed for the launch, so the company advises even nearby residents to watch online. Other streaming services — including Amazon Prime — are piggybacking on Blue Origin’s coverage.

For updates, watch @blueorigin on Twitter and @jeffbezos on Instagram.

When to watch

Liftoff at 8 a.m. CT (6 a.m. PT) is the most important time to tune in, but there are other points on the timeline worth watching for on Blue Origin’s Twitter feed (count backward from launch time for T-minus milestones):

  • T-minus-6.5 hours: New Shepard leaves its parking spot in Blue Origin’s “Barn” and heads out to the launch pad.
  • T-minus-2 hours: Bezos and crewmates arrive at Launch Site One.
  • T-minus-90 minutes: Webcast begins.
  • T-minus-45 minutes: Crew leaves training center and heads for launch pad.
  • T-minus-30 minutes: Crew boards capsule.
  • T-minus-24 minutes: Capsule hatch is closed.
  • T-minus-10 minutes: Terminal Count Ready Report.
  • T-zero: Ignition, with liftoff coming seconds later.
  • T-plus-8 minutes: Booster lands at Launch Site One.
  • T-plus-11 minutes: Crew capsule makes its touchdown.
  • T-plus-22 minutes: Capsule hatch is opened.
  • T-plus-2 hours (approximate): Post-landing news conference.

Who to watch

New Shepard crew portrait
New Shepard’s first crew, from left: Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos (with lucky cowboy boots), Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk. (Blue Origin Photo)

Jeff Bezos will be the most closely watched crew member. He says he’s been a space geek since watching the Apollo 11 moon landing at the age of 5, and was the head of Princeton’s chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space during his college days. Bezos has joked that he started up Amazon to earn the money he’d need for Blue Origin, and he cashes in about a billion dollars of Amazon stock annually to fund the company. His ultimate dream? Having millions of people living and working in space.

Mark Bezos, Jeff’s younger brother, is a volunteer firefighter in New York, a co-founder of New York-based HighPost Capital and a member of the leadership council at the Robin Hood Foundation, which was co-founded by his mother and fights poverty in New York. Jeff Bezos asked Mark to be on the flight because he wanted to share “the greatest adventure, with my best friend.”

Wally Funk is due to become history’s oldest spaceflier at the age of 82. She was one of the “Mercury 13” aviators who were subjected to the same tests as NASA’s Mercury astronauts as part of a research project that some hoped would open the way for women to join NASA’s early astronaut program. Unfortunately for Funk and the 12 others, that didn’t occur until the late 1970s, and none of the 13 was accepted. Funk went on to a distinguished career as a pilot and aviation inspector, and enthusiastically took Jeff Bezos up on his invitation to be a part of Blue Origin’s first space crew.

Oliver Daemen is due to become history’s youngest spaceflier at the age of 18. He’s a native of the Netherlands who took a year off after high school graduation to get his private pilot’s license.  In September, he’s due to attend the University of Utrecht to study physics and innovation management. His father is Joes Daemen, who’s the CEO of a Dutch investment firm. With Joes’ support, Oliver put in a bid for a New Shepard seat that was auctioned off for charity. His bid wasn’t high enough to win, but he arranged to buy a seat on New Shepard’s second crewed flight. And when the winner of the $28 million auction bowed out, Daemen’s reservation was switched to this week’s flight.

Other key team members: Kevin Sproge, a former Navy test pilot, serves as chief trainer. Sarah Knights, whose background is in STEM education, is capsule communicator (a.k.a. Capcom). Flight director Steve Lanius has worked on environmental, health and safety issues at Blue Origin since 2004. And rollout flight director Nicholas Patrick is a former NASA astronaut.

Why watch?

Suborbital spaceflight is nothing new: After all, New Shepard is named after the first American to ride a rocket into space, NASA astronaut Alan Shepard, who took his suborbital trip in 1961. The first privately funded, crewed suborbital spaceflight was done in 2004 by SpaceShipOne, with backing from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Virgin Galactic sent its first crew members to space in 2018 — and the company’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, made his own space trip last week.

Nevertheless, this flight is a milestone for several reasons:

  • Blue Origin’s first crewed spaceflight.
  • First time for a commercial company to launch a privately funded and built spacecraft from a private launch range with people on board.
  • Oldest and youngest humans to fly in space (Funk and Daemen).
  • First passenger to pay a fare for a suborbital spaceflight (Daemen).

Blue Origin is already lining up more suborbital space passengers, with the next flight due to launch as soon as September. In the months ahead, there’s likely to be a big reality check in the market for space tourism and human-tended space research — with Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX all vying for a share.

But Bezos prefers to take the long view. “This isn’t a competition,” he said during an NBC interview. “This is about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.”

This report was originally published on July 19 and has been updated with further details about coverage.

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