Who was in the rocket with Bezos
Who will be in the rocket with Bezos
From CNN’s Jackie Wattles and Alyssa Kraus
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is launching into space today aboard a Blue Origin spacecraft he funded.
This is the first time humans will go to space aboard a Blue Origin vehicle, although the rocket ship is autonomous and does not require a pilot.
There are six seats aboard the capsule, but only four seats will be filled.
Here are the other three people who will ride alongside Jeff Bezos:
Mark Bezos:
- Jeff Bezos’ younger brother, Mark Bezos, will join the billionaire on the 11-minute flight. Mark Bezos, formerly the owner of an advertising agency, is now a senior vice president at Robin Hood, a New York City charity.
- “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space,” Jeff Bezos said in an Instagram post. “On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend.”
Wally Funk:
- Wally Funk — who trained for NASA’s Mercury program but was denied the opportunity to go to space — is finally getting her time among the stars. Funk volunteered as a member of the Mercury 13 program, otherwise known as the “Women in Space Program,” in February 1961, which was a privately-funded effort intended to begin training women to fly in NASA’s earliest space programs. The 82-year-old will fly on New Shepard as an “honored guest,” according to a post on Bezos’ Instagram. After this flight, Funk will be the oldest person to fly to space.
- “I got ahold of NASA four times, and said ‘I want to become an astronaut,’ but nobody would take me,” Funk said. “I didn’t think I would ever get to go up. Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, ‘Wally, you’re a girl, you can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Guess what, doesn’t matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it,’ and I like to do things that nobody’s ever done before.”
Oliver Daemen:
- The mystery bidder who paid $28 million for a trip to space with Jeff Bezos can no longer make the flight, Blue Origin announced. Therefore, Oliver Daemen, an 18-year old recent high school graduate, will take the anonymous bidder’s place.
- Daemen “was a participant in the auction and had secured a seat on the second flight. We moved him up when this seat on the first flight became available,” a Blue Origin spokesperson told CNN Business. If today’s flight goes according to plan, Daemen will become the youngest person ever to fly to space.
If you want to fly on a Blue Origin flight, here are the physical requirements
Jeff Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old pilot and an 18-year old recent high school graduate are scheduled to take off for space soon aboard the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin.
Everyone on board must comply with a set of requirements laid out by Blue Origin.
According to the company’s website, there are limitations on who can take a New Shepard flight:
- You must be 18 years of age or older.
- You must be between 5’0″ and 6’4″ in height and between 110 pounds and 223 pounds in weight.
- You must be in good enough physical shape to climb seven flights of stairs in a minute and a half
- You must be able to fasten and unfasten a seat harness in less than 15 seconds, spend up to an hour and a half strapped into the capsule with the hatch closed and withstand up to 5.5G in force during descent.
The astronauts have arrived at the launch site
The motley crew of four future astronauts arrived at the launch site, creatively named “Launch Site One,” around 6 a.m. local time.
They’ll spend another hour or so at the training center before departing for the actual launch pad, where they’ll get into the New Shepard capsule.
Liftoff is expected at 9 a.m. ET. The entire flight will take about 11 minutes.
Fueling has begun
From CNN’s Jackie Wattles
The New Shepard rocket is now being loaded with propellant. The company likes to say that it basically “runs on water” because the fuels it breathes on are super-chilled liquid oxygen — called LOX — and liquid hydrogen.
New Shepard rocket is on the launch pad
From CNN’s Jackie Wattles
Blue Origin rolled its New Shepard rocket and capsule out to its launch pad in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, around 1:30 a.m. local time.
There’s no one piloting the New Shepard. Here’s why.
There are four people flying today on Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule, and while one of them — 82-year-old Wally Funk — is a pilot, her decades of experience aren’t required to fly the rocket.
That’s because New Shepard is fully autonomous. Blue Origin has spent the better part of the last decade running the suborbital New Shepard rocket through a series of successful test flights that have been fully automated and, thus far, carried no humans.
Today’s flight will mark the first time carried people on board.
Bezos’ flight comes 9 days after Richard Branson flew to space
From CNN’s Jackie Wattles and Alyssa Kraus
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be launching himself to space today aboard the New Shepard, a rocket ship created by the billionaire’s company, Blue Origin.
However, Bezos will not be the first billionaire to go to space on a vehicle he funded. Nine days prior, British billionaire Richard Branson successfully took a joy ride to space aboard the VSS Unity, a spacecraft developed by the entrepreneur’s company, Virgin Galactic.
On July 11, Branson — along with Virgin Galactic employees Beth Moses, Colin Bennett, and Sirisha Bandla and pilots Dave Mackay and Michael Masucci — enjoyed panoramic views of the Earth and a few minutes of weightlessness before returning to the ground.
Both Branson and Bezos have been competing in the “billionaire space race,” as both men have worked to develop, test and launch suborbital rockets that can take customers to space.
Although Branson beat Bezos to space by nine days, Branson has dismissed the idea that he raced Bezos to space. However, his plan to get to space was not part of the testing roadmap laid out earlier this year by Virgin Galactic.
Nevertheless, Branson and Bezos’ space tourism companies have one key difference: Bezos’ Blue Origin has never taken a person into space inside one of its spacecrafts.
Jeff Bezos will fly to space today
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is set to fly to space today on the first crewed flight of the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin.
Bezos — who recently stepped down as Amazon’s CEO — will be one of six people on the flight.
The company’s six-seater capsule and 59-foot rocket will tear toward the edge of space on an 11-minute flight that’ll reach more than 60 miles above Earth.
Blue Origin has spent the better part of the last decade running the New Shepard rocket through a series of successful test flights that have been fully automated and, thus far, carried no humans.
Some context: If all goes according to plan, Bezos — the world’s richest person with a net worth of $187 billion — will be the second of the billionaire space tycoons to experience a ride aboard the rocket technology that he’s poured millions into developing. Richard Branson flew to space earlier this month aboard a supersonic space plane developed by his company, Virgin Galactic.
Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/MV0XvU3LAh0/h_f984c50130f54cd840bedc5937d841d5
