According to the latest report, in the United States, Blue Origin, the space tourism company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced that the fourth manned space flight will take place on March 23rd.
Celebrities on the flight include “Saturday Night Live” star Pete Davidson, who will ascend from Texas aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard with five other paying passengers empty for a short suborbital flight. CNN previously reported that Davidson was in talks with Blue Origin about the flight.
After years of hard work, Blue Origin’s launch vehicle and capsule made its first human space launch last year, sending Bezos and others to the edge of space. Flying with Bezos was his brother Mark Bezos, female pilot Wally Funk and a paying customer.
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Since then, Blue Origin has carried out two more suborbital flights with passengers including “Star Trek” star William Shatner and “Good Morning America” host Michael Strahan.
Moreover, Blue Origin’s goal is to make these suborbital spaceflights mainstream, offering passengers a 10-minute or so supersonic experience. So far, these passengers have mostly been celebrities, as well as customers who can afford the high fees.
Passengers who flew with Davidson included investor Marty Allen, entrepreneur and business professor Jim Kitchen and former FAA deputy director of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation George Nield. George Nield, Orlando real estate developer Marc Hagle, and his wife Sharon Hagle, who founded a nonprofit focused on space.
Before takeoff, the passengers will train for several days at Blue Origin’s facilities in western Texas, where they will then climb into the crew capsule that sits on top of the rocket.
After liftoff, the rocket will break through the speed of sound, separating from the capsule as it approaches the top of its flight path. While the rocket booster returns to Earth for a vertical landing, the crewed capsule will continue its flight into the atmosphere more than 90 kilometers above the ground. Passengers will be able to see dark space there, and the capsule’s windows will offer panoramic views of Earth.
Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness as the flight reaches its zenith. When gravity begins to pull the capsule back to the ground, the passengers will experience intense gravitational pressure again, and then the parachute will deploy to help the capsule slow down. Finally, the capsule will land in the Texas desert at 30 kilometers per hour.
Furthermore, Blue Origin, the first company to begin offering regular suborbital space tourism flights, has not disclosed the price of seats on the New Shepard spacecraft. Its main rival, Virgin Galactic, flew its first manned flight before Bezos flew last July, with passengers including its founder Richard Branson, currently every seat the fee is $450,000.
Blue Origin is developing the New Glenn, a launch vehicle powerful enough to send passengers into actual orbit. Blue Origin plans to use the BE-4 engine on New Glenn, which will be used on a launch vehicle designed by United Launch Alliance (ULA). ULA, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, is responsible for major launches of national security concerns. ULA currently uses the Russian RD-180 engine.
