Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos gazes at a New Shepard booster after a successful test flight. The same rocket will take him to space on Tuesday.
Blue Origin
On Sunday, spaceflight company Blue Origin announced that everything looks set and ready to go for its first human spaceflight, which will launch Jeff Bezos and three others over 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface before their safe return. The total flight time will be about 12 minutes.
“The vehicles are ready to fly,” chief engineer Chris Jaeger said at a pre-launch media briefing, adding that both the rocket and the capsule that will carry the astronauts have checked out after their last test flight. “There are no engineering or technical issues.”
The flight, currently scheduled for Tuesday, July 20, will come less than two weeks after competitor company Virgin Galactic successfully launched a crew of four people into suborbital space, kicking off a new era of space tourism as the two…