

Daemen, Blue Origin’s first paying customer, is set to study physics and innovation management at college in the Netherlands. New Shepard is named for Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American in space.įunk was one of the so-called Mercury 13 group of women who trained to become NASA astronauts in the early 1960s but was passed over because of her gender. The flight came on the anniversary of Americans Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969. Article contentīezos gave a thumbs-up sign inside the capsule after landing, stepped out to cheers, then exchanged high-fives with some of the roughly two dozen family members and company employees on hand.īranson got to space first, but Bezos flew higher – Virgin Galactic managed an altitude of 53 miles (86 km) – in what experts called the world’s first unpiloted space flight with an all-civilian crew. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The two flights give credibility and inject enthusiasm into the fledgling space tourism industry that the Swiss bank UBS estimates will be worth $3 billion annually in a decade. The flight came nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism company Virgin Galactic’s successful inaugural suborbital flight from New Mexico. Since the founding, the company was very secretive. The Company develops both rocket propulsion systems for vertical takeoff and vertical landing (VTVL) vehicles for access to suborbital and orbital space. Pioneering female aviator Wally Funk, 82, and recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen, 18, became the oldest and youngest people to reach space. Blue Origin, LLC, a private American aerospace company, is developing technologies to enable private human access to space with the goal to dramatically lower costs and increase reliability.

There were generally clear skies with a few patchy clouds on a cool morning for the launch.īezos, founder of ecommerce company Inc, and his brother Mark Bezos, a private equity executive, were joined by two others. The fully autonomous 60-foot-tall (18.3-meters-tall) gleaming white spacecraft, with a blue feather design on its side, ignited its BE-3 engines for a liftoff from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One facility about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural town of Van Horn. Try refreshing your browser, or tap here to see other videos from our team. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
