Blue Origin, the space company founded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, successfully launched its New Shepard rocket on Tuesday, marking a major milestone in the commercial space industry.
The launch took place at the company’s launch site in West Texas, with the rocket carrying a crew capsule designed to eventually take tourists to the edge of space. This was the 15th test flight for the New Shepard rocket, and the first with a crew on board.
The crew consisted of four people, including Blue Origin’s first paying customer, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest person to ever travel to space. He was joined by Bezos himself, his brother Mark Bezos, and 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk, who became the oldest person to ever travel to space.
The crew capsule reached an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers) above the Earth, allowing the passengers to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before safely returning to the ground with the help of parachutes.
This successful launch is a major step forward for Blue Origin, which has been working towards making space tourism a reality for years. The company plans to offer suborbital flights to paying customers, with tickets expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Bezos, who stepped down as CEO of Amazon earlier this month, has invested billions of dollars into Blue Origin and has stated that he wants to use his wealth to help fund the company’s ambitious space exploration goals.
The successful launch also comes just days after fellow billionaire Richard Branson made history by becoming the first person to travel to space in his own company’s spacecraft, Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity.
While both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are focused on space tourism, they are also competing in the larger commercial space industry, which is expected to grow significantly in the coming years.
With this latest achievement, Blue Origin has proven that it is a major player in the space industry and is well on its way to making space travel accessible to the general public. As the company continues to push the boundaries of space exploration, it is clear that the future of commercial space travel is looking brighter than ever before.
