They’ll be going up and coming right back down, and they’ll be doing it in less time, about 11 minutes, than it takes most people to get to work. That is not what the Bezos brothers and their fellow passengers will be doing. When most people think about spaceflight, they think about an astronaut circling the Earth, floating in space, for at least a few days. They include his brother, Mark Bezos Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot and one of the “Mercury 13” women and an 18-year old recent high school graduate named Oliver Daemen.īezos was supposed to fly alongside a mystery bidder who won a recent Blue Origin auction by agreeing to pay $28 million for a seat on the flight, but the company announced Thursday that the person, who asked to remain anonymous for the time being, had to bow out because of “scheduling conflicts.” Daemen - whose father, Dutch investment firm founder Joes Daemen, paid for his ticket - will fly in the auction winner’s place. Though the New Shepard capsule can carry up to six people, Bezos is bringing just three others along on this inaugural journey. Here’s everything you need to know before the big event. (Shots of the interior - and Bezos’ facial expressions - won’t be released until after the flight.) The missions is expected to kick off Tuesday after 8 am ET, weather permitting.ĬNN Business will be sharing the livestream and running a live blog with updates. The public will be able to watch the whole thing go down on Blue Origin’s livestream, where it will show exterior shots of the rocket and capsule shooting up toward the cosmos. We're already working on our next development vehicle.Blast off: Wall Street loves space stocks – and Branson’s flight gives them a boost Not the outcome any of us wanted, but we're signed up for this to be hard, and the Blue Origin team is doing an outstanding job. "A flight instability drove an angle of attack that triggered our range safety system to terminate thrust on the vehicle. "Three months ago, we successfully flew our second test vehicle in a short hop mission, and then last week we lost the vehicle during a developmental test at Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 45,000 feet," said Bezos in a Blue Origin blog post. UPDATE: Jeff Bezos has issued a statement via Blue Origin's rep. "I'd hoped he'd open up a little when he started getting some federal funding," Simpson said. Simpson remembers meeting the tech mogul six years ago at the venture's launch, when the Van Horn Advocate got an exclusive story. "People that go out there are forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement," Simpson said.īezos has been funneling money into Blue Origin for years in an attempt to build a successful vertical take-off, vertical landing rocket. The local Fire Department was called down to Blue Origin's base as a result of the accident, but no-one close to the incident will talk - and for good reason. I don't know if blew it up themselves because they lost contact, or if it blew up on its own." "It was rocketing up pretty well, and all of a sudden it blew apart. He found out via the FAA, who publish Special Use alerts for these sorts of tests, warning others to stay out of the air space in question. Larry Simpson, publisher of local newspaper the Van Horn Advocate, knew the test flight was set to take place, but not because Blue Origin told him - in fact, they never tell him anything, he said. One Van Horn local updated her Facebook status to say: "Just saw a jet in the sky explode and come down burning towards 54." This private space industry is so competitive and secretive." "One said it was just like the Challenger: an explosion, then a stream of smoke in the sky. "People in town saw it and reported it, and posted it on Facebook," added the official, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of repercussions.
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