Blue Origin, billionaire Jeff Bezos' rocket company, said on Wednesday it is targeting July 20 for its first suborbital sightseeing trip on its New Shepard spacecraft, a landmark moment in a competition to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel.
Blue Origin also said it will offer one seat on the first flight to the winning bidder of a five-week online auction, the proceeds of which will be donated to the space firm's foundation.
The New Shepard rocket-and-capsule combo is designed to autonomously fly six passengers more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth into suborbital space, high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before the pressurized capsule returns to earth under parachutes.
A 'Right Stuff' for Our Moment of Space Travel - The New York Times
The first third of the book provides a riveting account of the underreported commercial space race, which has up until now lacked a worthy storyteller, though it is replete with the near misses, catastrophes and jockeying between pilots familiar to readers of Norman Mailer's "Of a Fire on the Moon" and Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff . " In these early pages Schmidle takes us through these paces.
At this point, the book stops being solely about space exploration and is richer for it; the account of Virgin Galactic's efforts proceeds but does so in tandem with Stucky's and Schmidle's stories, each man grappling with that uniquely fraught experience: fatherhood. Stucky, recently divorced, is for a time estranged from his children.
NASA Hails China Space Travel As 'Unifying Force,' But U.S. Law Bans Alliance
There's a new major player in the final frontier, but the United States' space agency under President Joe Biden sees an upside to its top competitor's success, even if U.S. scientists remain formally banned from cooperating with their Chinese counterparts.
For decades, the realm of outer space travel was dominated by the U.S. and Russia, a reality set by their Cold War-era space race that ultimately helped fuel historic developments now also being advanced by a range of countries across the globe, including in Europe, India, Israel, Japan and the United Arab Emirates.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Christie's selling a space-aged wine that could fetch $1 million
A bottle of red wine that spent more than a year in space could end up being the most expensive wine ever sold.
Christie's is selling a bottle of Pétrus 2000 that was aged for 14 months aboard the International Space Station (ISS) before returning to Earth in January. And the British auction house estimates will ultimately fetch a price " in the region of $1 million ."
That would make the space-aged vintage the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. (The current record for a single bottle of wine came in 2018, when anonymous buyers paid $558,000 for a bottle of 1945 Romanee-Conti French Burgandy, sold by Sotheby's.)
Space travel grows 20 years after 1st space tourist
Branson Grows Old While Bezos Takes Over Space Travel
Meanwhile, after 15 years of Branson frequently announcing that his Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo was about to fly passengers, the program remains stalled by problematic test flights.
Branson was 54 years old when, in 2004, he announced his quest to be first to offer suborbital rocket rides. It was a characteristically bold project from a guy who always cast himself as a game-changer—most conspicuously by gatecrashing the airline business with sassy and sexy Virgin Atlantic. It married with his image of being a derring-do adventurer up for any physical challenge.
Everyday Americans lining up for space travel - Southern Standard
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Sixty years after Alan Shepard became the first American in space, everyday people are on the verge of following in his cosmic footsteps.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company used Wednesday's anniversary to announce an auction for a seat on the company's first crew spaceflight, launched by a rocket named New Shepard. The Texas liftoff is targeted for July 20 — the date of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic aims to kick off tourist flights next year, just as soon as he straps into his space-skimming, plane-launched rocketship for a test run from the New Mexico base.
Veteran NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams talks about the future of space travel, Mars, and a Woman on
HOUSTON (CW39) When NASA Astronaut Jeff Williams looks up at the sky, he sees more than just bright stars, he sees his incredible past. He is one of less than 250 people on the planet, that have been to the International Space Station. He has been more than once and is no stranger to accomplishing remarkable things.
CW39 Anchor Sharron Melton sits down to talk with Jeff Williams. In part one of her interview they talk about so many new projects and plans being made for NASA. They talk about what it’s like seeing everything that’s happening with NASA. The Mars Rover Perseverance and Ingenuity Helicopter, and partnerships with Space X taking new Astronauts to the International Space Station, and more, keep NASA moving to the next frontier.
UCLA Engineering In-Flight Conversation with SpaceX Crew 2 aboard the International Space Station
SpaceX Crew-2 mission pilot Megan McArthur '93 and mission commander Shane "Kim" Kimbrough aboard the International Space Station (top) and Anneliese Peterson and Anil Nair at UCLA's Laser Spectroscopy and Gas Dynamics Laboratory (bottom).
The SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft "Endeavour" carrying four astronauts from three countries successfully launched on April 23 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.
Happening on Twitter
Blue Origin targeting July for first crewed flight, opens auction for a seat https://t.co/9KmKbltmlV https://t.co/cUU5tzg1CZ verge (from New York) Wed May 05 16:18:32 +0000 2021
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