Jeff Bezos Blue Origin Completes 11-min Space Trip
Jeff Bezos and three others landed safely after Blue Origin's first flight to space with passengers aboard, a key milestone in the company's effort to make space tourism viable.
We had recently released a video about Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic that launched a spaceflight with the aim of making space tourism possible for all. You can watch the video to learn more about it. Well now Amazon Founder and the world’s richest man Jeff Bezos, 57, founded another company called Blue Origin and even their aim is to make travelling to space a possibility for all. Bezos said he's planned on traveling to space since he was five years old. Now finally he made his dream come true. Yesterday on 20 July, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket was launched at 8:22 a.m from West Texas. There were 4 people on board. Jeff Bezos himself, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk - a 82 year old woman pilot who was denied the chance to go to space in 1960 because she was a woman. She is the oldest woman to go into space. The 4th spot on the rocket was auctioned off. A person had paid $28 million for the seat but due to last minute scheduling problems, the person was not able to make it. He would go on the next rocket.
Somerset Capital Partners is a company in the Netherlands. Its CEO Joes Daemen, had also purchased a ticket. Since the person was unable to go, Daemen sent his son Oliver on the rocket. The company has not revealed the amount of money paid by Joes Daemen. Oliver is just 18 years old and is the youngest person to go in space.
The rocket took off, 100 kilometers above the Earth. Its speed was 3700 kph. Once they reached the edge of space, they then felt a sense of weightlessness for a few minutes and then they returned back safely. The entire journey took 11 minutes. The company says it plans two more flights this year, then “many more" next year. Blue Origin hasn’t disclosed the expected price of future space trips. Another interesting fact, a 30-year-old engineer from Kalyan, Maharashtra Sanjal Gavande, is one of the engineers who helped build Jeff Bezos’ space rocket. She had applied for the position of space engineer at NASA but was rejected citing citizenship issues. However, she later joined Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin as a systems engineer at the beginning of April this year.
