Blue Origin Successfully Launches Six Passengers to the Edge of Space (cnn.com) 34
"Blue Origin's tourism rocket has launched passengers to the edge of space for the first time in nearly two years," reports CNN, "ending a hiatus prompted by a failed uncrewed test flight."
The New Shepard rocket and capsule lifted off at 9:36 a.m. CT (10:36 a.m. ET) from Blue Origin's facilities on a private ranch in West Texas.
NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the nation's first Black astronaut candidate... Dwight completed that challenge and reached the edge of space at the age of 90, making him the oldest person to venture to such heights, according to a spokesperson from Blue Origin...
"It's a life-changing experience," he said. "Everybody needs to do this."
The rocket booster landed safely a couple minutes prior to the capsule. During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Kármán line, an area 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth's surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins...
"And at the peak of the flight, passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and striking views of Earth through the cabin windows."
NS-25, Blue Origin's seventh crewed flight to date, carried six customers aboard the capsule: venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, founder of the French craft brewery Brasserie Mont-Blanc; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; aviator Gopi Thotakura; and Ed Dwight, a retired US Air Force captain selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to be the nation's first Black astronaut candidate... Dwight completed that challenge and reached the edge of space at the age of 90, making him the oldest person to venture to such heights, according to a spokesperson from Blue Origin...
"It's a life-changing experience," he said. "Everybody needs to do this."
The rocket booster landed safely a couple minutes prior to the capsule. During the mission, the crew soared to more than three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour. The rocket vaulted the capsule past the Kármán line, an area 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth's surface that is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins...
"And at the peak of the flight, passengers experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and striking views of Earth through the cabin windows."
Cool! (Score:3)
Now, bring 'em back!
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Valid point. One has to make a lot of assumptions to infer that the folks returned back safely. The capsule might have just dropped them off in space and returned back safely. The passenger who urged that, "everybody must do it"; might could have been referring to pooping in pants. Blue origin might not want to lose future business by reporting any tragic events. Who would want to jeopardies their next quarter results?
Phallic rocket (Score:1)
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... Making the 90-year-old, "the oldest person to venture to such heights". It's indeed a life changing experience!
Yes, but... (Score:2)
"Blue Origin Successfully Launches Six Passengers to the Edge of Space"
Yes, but did they also bring them back safely? Because that's the tricky part from what I hear.
"Sure, things went wrong and they all died, but on the bright side, they made it to the edge of space."
Obligatory Futurama (Score:2)
Yes, I saw. You were doing well until everyone died.
Re: Yes, but... (Score:1)
They brought them back, barely. There were some issues on the landing.
Going to space is hard, getting back, even harder. Even the Apollo missions had a high likelihood of being a one way ticket.
Someday? (Score:3)
Nice trick (Score:2)
These stunts by everyone who isn't SpaceX (Yes, I'm including Boeing) are fine but the pace is glacial. Get on with it!
Just up and back -- again? (Score:2)
More like Blue Destination or Blue Yo-Yo. :-)
Does this change any of the space is fake and gay (Score:2)
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No, no impact whatsoever,
Obligatory XKCD (Score:2)
Meaningful things in space are not like this [xkcd.com], they're like this [xkcd.com]. Getting "to space" [xkcd.com] is the easy part - the X15 got "to space" just by going fast and then steering up. It's orbital velocity and the energies involved that are the hard part.
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To be fair, going straight up 100 km is not backyard model rocketry. It is not simple to safely launce humans to that altitude and return then to Earth.
However, it is indeed only a small fraction of the knowledge and effort required to get into orbit.
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It's not just a knowledge and effort thing. New Shepard is 20,6t dry mass. Falcon 9 is 22,2t dry mass and could lift an entire New Shepard to LEO using 5 times the delta-V. It's such a different difficulty level that they're not even playing the same game; New Shepard is just a carnival ride.
Hard to imagine they will make it to the moon (Score:2)
It's like Jonh Deere deciding to make sport cars.
Re: Hard to imagine they will make it to the moon (Score:2)
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I wouldn't use the word successful there.
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Awesome! (Score:1)
Very happy the flight worked as planned! The more people, and companies, in space the better.
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Agreed. Earth will be a much better place with them all gone.
Expensive carnival ride (Score:3)
How does it make money in the long run?
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I think you have to make it exactly like a carnival ride where it's just something you buy a ticket to and go, even though it's expensive but I imagine if you have a dozen or so of these, doing a few flights a day, you might have something. Does it recoup all the development? Naw, but if you make it reliable enough to have that kinda cadence maybe you can drop the price to a few thousand dollars and you might have something.
Way easier said than done but it'd be nice if a flight even just like this is attai
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It's just a side project in their development of a lunar lander.
That's right, NASA contracted them to develop the 2nd lunar lander after Starship. They are supposed to be landing humans on the Moon later this decade.
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It provides an option for cheaper science.
Right now if NASA puts an experiment on a sounding rocket and takes it to 100km it costs them $1 million per launch.
Blue Origin is half that for a seat, which means now the experiment can have a human tending to it.
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Pitch it a bunch of venture capitalists.
Cool, but how about those Kuiper satellites? (Score:2)
Bezos has to be a bit embarrassed that he needed to hitch a ride on SpaceX to get his first Kuiper satellites in orbit. He really needs to start getting cargo into orbit soon if he really wants to be able to compete with Starlink on price.
All of the cruise ships and international airlines are already upgrading to Starlink now, so they better hurry up if they want a piece of that profitable commercial business.
Expensive Way to Rid the World of Them (Score:2)
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