Jeff Bezos goes to space with his company Blue Origin
(Blue Origin / YouTube SS)
Blue Origin successfully completed the first manned suborbital flight of the New Shepard reusable system.
Four tourists have traveled to space, including company founder Jeff Bezos and the world's youngest and oldest astronaut.
Blue Origin has been developing the New Shepard system since 2006.
The ship is designed for suborbital tourist flights, during which passengers will reach an altitude of more than 100 kilometers, being beyond the Karman line (the limite of space).
The system is positioned as reusable and consists of a single-stage rocket and a six-seat passenger capsule. The entire flight is automatic.
The company has already conducted 15 test flights and tested the emergency rescue system and precision landing system.
As part of the new NS-16 flight, the fourth model of the NS-4 system made the first flight with people on board.
The occupants of the ship were the Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos himself, his brother Mark Bezos, the 82-year-old Wally Funk and the teenager Oliver Daemen.
Funk is a pilot and in 1961 she was selected for the female astronaut program (known as "Mercury-13"), but she never made it to space.
On the other hand, the student Daemen is 18 years old and his flight was paid for by his billionaire father and founder of the Dutch investment company Somerset Capital Partners.
The flight inclused the youngest and oldest astronauts in the world.
The flight itself began at 8:00 local time and took about 11 minutes. Initially, the rocket launched vertically upward and began to accelerate.
After three minutes a capsule separated from the rocket, which, by inertia, continued to gain altitude and crossed the Karman line, while the passengers were able to stay for 3-4 minutes in zero gravity.
Then the rocket landed on a platform three kilometers from the launch site, and the capsule made a soft landing using three parachutes.
Sources:
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