“Best day ever,” Bezos said after the capsule touched down
near Van Horn, Texas.
The spacecraft is named after Alan Shepard, the first
American launched into space.
The world’s richest man blasted off Tuesday from a remote
desert launch site in Texas, as he became the second billionaire to self-fund a
trip to space this month.
The fully automated rocket reached an altitude of about 106
kilometers after reaching Mach 3. Once at altitude, the booster separated from
the capsule and returned to earth landing upright near the launch site. The
crew was able to experience weightlessness for 3 to 4 minutes before a
parachute landing back on earth
The altitude surpassed the 85-kilometer mark reached by
British billionaire Richard Branson on July 11 when he and five crewmates flew
aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket-powered space plane.
The 57-year-old founder of e-commerce giant Amazon founded
Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of creating permanent space colonies where
people will live and work.
Bezos was joined by his brother, Mark, plus 82-year-old
aviation pioneer Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen,
making them the oldest and youngest persons to fly into space.
Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13, group of women who
were part of a privately funded program to train women for space travel. None
of them traveled to space.
The Dutch-born Daemen was a last-minute addition to the crew
after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction for a seat on New Shepard
dropped out, citing a scheduling conflict. Daemen’s father was a runner-up in
the auction, which makes the young astronaut Blue Origin’s first paying
customer.
Bezos, a fervent space enthusiast since watching the Apollo
lunar missions in his youth, made his trip on the 52nd anniversary of the
historic Apollo 11 lunar landing.
During a television interview Monday, Bezos insisted that
his goal was not about competition with Branson, but “about building a road to
space so that future generations can do incredible things in space.”
Blue Origin’s first manned mission comes after 15 test
flights of the New Shepard vehicle. Bob Smith, the company’s chief executive
officer, says two more manned missions aboard New Shepard are planned by the
end of this year.
The company is also building a larger rocket, New Glenn —
named after John Glenn, the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth — that will
send both manned and unmanned vehicles into space.
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