The six passengers, which include a Blue Origin engineer and five paying customers, boarded their New Shepard capsule Thursday just after sunrise at the company’s West Texas launch facilities. Boosted by a 60-foot-tall rocket, they soared to more than three times the speed of sound, or more than 2,000 miles per hour. Their capsule vaulted past the Kármán Line at 100 kilometers (or 62 miles) altitude, which is widely recognized as the altitude at which outer space begins. And at the peak of the flight, they experienced a few minutes of weightlessness and, out their window, sweeping Earthly views.
This flight had been slated to include Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson, but he dropped out of the mission after Blue Origin announced a schedule change earlier this month. The company cited the need for additional ground tests on the New Shepard rocket as the reason for the delay.
The passengers’ New Shepard capsule, which is fully autonomous, deployed plumes of parachutes after diving back into the thickest part of the Earth’s atmosphere and landed with a puff of sand in the Texas desert.
What does this all mean?
Strahan wrote a message for the passengers on Thursday’s flight that was read to them by ground control: “This is the best ride you will ever have, but it’s way too short.”
Blue Origin’s goal is to make these suborbital spaceflights a mainstay of pop culture, giving a 10-minute supersonic joyride to invited guests — who thus far have mostly been celebrities — and anyone else who can afford it.
Blue Origin is the first company to begin offering regular suborbital space tourism flights. Its chief competitor, Virgin Galactic, notably had its first crewed flight — which included founder Richard Branson — before Bezos’ flight last July. But Virgin Galactic has yet to follow up that flight with another crewed flight after it later became clear that the company’s space plane had traveled out of its designated flight path. The company now says it’s undergoing unrelated technology upgrades and may return to flight later this year.
SpaceX is the only private company that offers trips to orbit. The company completed the first-ever all-civilian flight to orbit last September, taking a billionaire and three of his chosen crewmates on a three-day trip. And next week, the company plans to take four paying customers on a flight to the International Space Station, which orbits about 200 miles above Earth.
Blue Origin did not have specific updates on BE-4 when reached for comment.
