Billionaire and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and three others, traveled to space aboard his own Blue Origin spacecraft.
The New Shepard, the rocket carrying the crew from West Texas into space, has been in development for over a decade, and today was its first flight with people on board.
The New Shepard carried the crew carried just over the Kármán line, the boundary at 100 kilometers that marks the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space. This is more than 340,000 feet above Earth.
The trip was 10 minutes long, and the crew successfully took off at 9:12 a.m. and landed safely at 9:22 a.m.
Blue Origin, Bezos' aerospace company, funded the flight and the company's mission statement says:
"Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. In order to preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will need to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Blue is working on this today by developing partially and fully reusable launch vehicles that are safe, low cost and serve the needs of all civil, commercial and defense customers."https://www.blueorigin.com/about-blue
The Crew
Joining Bezos for this inaugural spaceflight was his brother Mark, 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk, and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen.
Congratulations to all of Team Blue past and present on reaching this historic moment in spaceflight history. This first astronaut crew wrote themselves into the history books of space, opening the door through which many after will pass. #GradatimFerociter #NSFirstHumanFlight— Blue Origin (@Blue Origin) 1626787566
Following the flight, fellow space enthusiast and billionaire Richard Branson took to social media to congratulate the Blue Origin team. Branson himself completed a successful space mission aboard a spacecraft he also funded himself.
Well done @blueorigin, @jeffbezos, Mark, Wally and Oliver. Impressive! Very best to all the crew from me and all the team at @virgingalactic— Richard Branson (@Richard Branson) 1626789019
Watch the flight recap below.
