Space Tourism: Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to launch first Space Sightseeing Flight on July 20

Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s rocket company Blue Origin said on Wednesday that the company is planning to launch its first Space Sightseeing Flight on July 20.

The rocket and crew capsule named New Shepard will carry six passengers on its first crewed flight. Blue Origin is hosting a public auction for a seat on the first crewed launch. The online auction will run until May 19. Blue Origin is auctioning the seat to benefit their foundation, Club for the Future.

New Shepard is a fully reusable, vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) space vehicle. It is about 18m in height and 4m wide. The capsule has six massive observation windows which will give a spectacular view for the astronauts.

New Shepard is designed to carry six passengers and scientific equipment to more than 100 km (62 miles/ 340,000 feet) above Earth into suborbital space. This invisible line, known as the Karman line separates Earth from space. (Only 569 people have ever been over the Karman Line.) The journey into suborbital space gives the passenger an experience of weightlessness. They can also see the blackness of space and curvature of the planet during the trip.

The booster unit lifts the pressurised passenger vessel vertically to about 76km in altitude, where the two detaches. While the momentum carries the capsule on an upward journey into space, the booster returns in a controlled manner and lands on a concrete pad.  The capsule later returns to the ground with the help of three parachutes. New Shepard will launch and land in West Texas.

 

Blue Origin made the announcement about their first crewed flight on the 60th anniversary of the first spaceflight made by an American astronaut, Alan Shepard, in whose honour Blue origin named its rocket and crew capsule. On 5 May 1961, Shepard piloted the Mercury-Redstone 3 mission and became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space. In 1971, Shepard walked on the Moon.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard is scheduled to launch on 20 July 2021 which marks the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.