JAKARTA - Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, will join the astronaut club, Tuesday 20 July, during the launch of the first crew by Blue Origin. This is an important moment for the space tourism industry which is still relatively new.
The mission comes days after Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson crossed the last frontier, defeating the Amazon kings in their battle with the billionaires.
Blue Origin, is rumored to be flying higher. Well literally in terms of altitude, where the New Shepard spacecraft will rise about 106 km higher from Earth compared to Virgin's spacecraft, Unity 22, which is only 86 km.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, with the goal of one day building a floating space colony with artificial gravity where millions of people would work and live.
Currently, the company is developing an orbital rocket called the New Glenn as well as a lunar lander that NASA hopes to contract under the Artemis program.
"They have 15 successful unmanned New Shepard flights and we have been waiting years to see when they will start flying people," Laura Forczyk, founder of space consulting firm Astralytical, told AFP.
New Shepard will launch at 8:00 am Central Time (20:00 GMT) on July 20 from a remote facility in the west Texas desert called Launch Site One, about 40 kilometers north of the city, Van Horn. The event will be broadcast live on BlueOrigin.com starting an hour and a half in advance.
After liftoff, New Shepard will accelerate into space at speeds exceeding three times the speed of sound (Mach 3) using a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen engine with no carbon emissions.
Upon reaching space, the Capsule immediately separated from its booster, and the astronauts untied it and began to experience a state of weightlessness.
The crew will spend several minutes outside the Karman line, the internationally recognized boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), and will reach a maximum altitude of 65 miles (106 kilometers).
At that point, they will be able to admire the curvature of the planets and the pitch blackness of the universe, from the large windows that cover a third of the cabin's surface area.
The booster returns independently to the landing pad north of its launch site, while the capsule free-falls back to Earth before releasing three giant parachutes, and eventually a booster will lead it to a gentle landing in the west Texas desert.
Beyond the first flight, relatively little is known about Blue Origin's future tourism plans.
Unlike Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin hasn't officially started selling tickets yet. While private passengers such as Oliver Daemen won his place through the auction process. The company wants two more flights this year, then "more" in 2022.
Forczyk, the analyst, said it would all depend on the level of demand these early flights generate, and how well the industry recovers from the crash that is bound to happen, because spaceflight is inherently risky.
Elon Musk's SpaceX will enter the fray in September with an orbital expedition in his Crew Dragon, and teaming up with another company, Axiom, for a visit to the International Space Station.
Outside of tourism, Blue Origin wants to replace SpaceX as NASA's leading private sector partner. “New Shepard became a kind of stepping stone and also a way of making money for bigger ambitions,” said Forczyk.
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