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Associated Press

When Blue Origin launches people into space for the first time, founder Jeff Bezos will be on board. No test pilots or flight engineers for Tuesday’s debut flight from West Texas, just Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer and a teenage tourist.
The capsule is entirely automated, unlike Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic rocket plane that required two pilots to get him to space and back a week ago.
Branson’s advice? “Just sit back, relax, look out of the window, just absorb the view outside,” he said on CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Differences in quirks and rockets aside, the billionaire rivals are gearing up to launch just about anybody willing to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars for a brief up-and-down space hop.
A brief look at what awaits Bezos and his passengers:
Take a peek inside Jeff Bezos’ first-class space flight
Bezos on board
Bezos created Blue Origin in 2000, a move that he said prompted his high school girlfriend to observe” “Jeff started Amazon just to get enough money to do Blue Origin – and I can’t prove her wrong”.
He has said he finances the rocket company by selling US$1 billion in Amazon stock a year. Bezos caught the space bug at age five while watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing on July, 20, 1969.
He chose the 52nd anniversary for his own launch. Enamoured by space history, Bezos named his New Shepard rocket after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and his bigger, still-in-development New Glenn rocket after John Glenn, the first American in orbit. The 57-year-old Bezos – who also owns The Washington Post– stepped down as Amazon’s CEO earlier this month and last week donated US$200 million to the Smithsonian Institution to renovate its National Air and Space Museum and launch an education centre. “To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity,” he said. “It’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life.”
Jeff Bezos’ 5 most extreme adventures so far
Who else is flying
Bezos personally invited two of his fellow passengers – his 50-year-old brother Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter, and female aviation pioneer Wally Funk. Joining them will be Oliver Daemen, a last-minute fill-in for the winner of a US$28 million charity auction who had a scheduling conflict. At age 82, Funk will become the oldest person in space. She was among 13 female pilots – the so-called Mercury 13 – who took the same tests in the early 1960s as Nasa’s Mercury 7 astronauts, but were barred because of their gender.
As for the Dutch Daemen – who at 18 will become the youngest person in space – his financier father bid on the capsule seat in June, but dropped out when the price soared. Blue Origin came calling just over a week ago, after the unidentified auction winner switched to a later flight. The teenage space fanatic, who starts college this fall, is Blue Origin’s first paying customer; no word on what his ticket cost.


Rocket and capsule
While Bezos won’t be the first boss to ride to space on his own rocket, he can lay claim to strapping in for his company’s first human launch. He’s also aiming higher, with an anticipated altitude of about 106km (66 miles) versus Branson’s 86km. Blue Origin’s 18-metre (60-foot) New Shepard rocket will accelerate toward space at three times the speed of sound, or Mach 3, before separating from the capsule and returning for an upright landing.
The passengers will experience three to four minutes of weightlessness, before their capsule parachutes onto the desert just 10 minutes after lift-off. That’s five minutes less than Alan Shepard’s 1961 Mercury flight. Blue Origin, though, offers the biggest windows ever built for a spacecraft. Bezos purchased the desolate, parched land for launching and landing rockets. The closest town is Van Horn, population 1,832.
Inside Richard Branson and Elon Musk’s unlikely friendship
Track record
Blue Origin has completed 15 test flights to space since 2015, carrying up experiments, children’s postcards and Mannequin Skywalker, the company’s passenger stand-in. Except for the booster crash-landing on the first trip, all the demos were successful. One rocket ended up flying seven times and another five.
The capsules also were recycled. Blue Origin deliberately aborted a couple flights after lift-off to test the emergency escape system on the capsule. The pace seemed slow compared with the competition, and many wondered why Blue Origin – its motto Gradatim Ferociter, or step by step ferociously – was taking so long to launch people.
Based in Kent, Washington, the company kept fairly mum on its launch plans. Bezos finally announced “it’s time” following the last test flight in April, a dress rehearsal that saw mock passengers briefly climb aboard before lift-off. The rocket and capsule that will be used Tuesday have flown twice before.

What’s next
Blue Origin is expected to open ticket sales soon after Bezos flies and has already lined up some of the other auction bidders. The company hasn’t disclosed the cost of a ride. The fourth seat on the upcoming flight was auctioned off for US$28 million. Nineteen space advocacy and education groups are getting US$1 million each as a result, with the rest to be used by Blue Origin’s Club for the Future for its own education effort. While the diminutive New Shepard is meant to launch people on brief flights to the edge of space, the mega New Glenn will be capable of hauling cargo and eventually crew into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida, possibly beginning late next year.
Blue Origin also has its eyes on the moon. Its proposed lunar lander, Blue Moon, lost to SpaceX’s Starship in Nasa’s recent commercial competition to develop the technology for getting the next astronauts onto the moon. Blue Origin is challenging the contract award, as is , the other competitor.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse


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Space

How Jeff Bezos will soar into space, higher than Richard Branson

Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin. File photo: AFP

The company Blue Origin founded by American billionaire Jeff Bezos will send humans into space for the first time on July 20, for a journey of a few minutes in zero gravity aboard his New Shepard rocket. A seat on a rocket is up for auction, but its price already exceeds $ 2.2 million. (Abaca via ZUMA Press/TNS)

This undated handout photo obtained on July 1, 2021 courtesy of Blue Origin shows the interior of the Blue Origin crew capsule. - Wally Funk, a 82-year-old woman pilot, will join Jeff Bezos in traveling to space this month on the first crewed spaceflight for the billionaire's company Blue Origin, the firm announced on July 1, 2021. Funk will become the oldest person ever to fly to space when she takes part in the July 20 journey aboard the New Shepard launch vehicle along with Bezos, his brother Mark and the unnamed winner of an auction for another seat on the aircraft. (Photo by Handout / BLUE ORIGIN / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY CREDIT "AFP PHOTO /BLUE ORIGIN/HANDOUT " - NO MARKETING - NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

Inside Richard Branson and Elon Musk’s unlikely friendship: bromance was on full display in that 3am Instagram pic ... but where was Jeff Bezos?

An unlikely friendship? Richard Branson and Elon Musk buddy up before the former takes off into outer space. Photo: @richardbranson/Twitter

SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO Elon Musk visits the construction site of Tesla’s gigafactory in Gruenheide, near Berlin, Germany, in May 2021. Photo: Reuters

British billionaire Richard Branson waves as he arrives at Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, on July 11, before travel to the cosmos. Photo: AFP

Take a peek inside Jeff Bezos’ first-class space flight – Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and spaceship photos revealed (and it’s fancy)

Jeff Bezos and the view from space on New Shepard’s 15th flight, April 14, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE, Blue Origin

Blue Origin blast-off. Photo: @MrTegdif/Twitter

Mark Bezos and his broth Jeff Bezos are flying to space. Photo: @marciojmsilva/Twitter

Blue Origin’s rocket on an earlier launch. Photo: @strangeorbit/Twitter

The interior of the Blue Origin Crew Capsule. Photo: Blue Origin/AFP

The cabin of New Shepard’s crew capsule. Photo: Blue Origin

Jeff Bezos speaks at an event before unveiling Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander, in Washington. The price to rocket into space next month with Bezos and his brother is a cool US$28 million – the winning bid during the live online auction on June 12, 2021. Photo: AP Photo

An illustration of passengers aboard the New Shepard capsule in space. Photo: Blue Origin

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft at 20 meters away from the docking access of the International Space Station on April 24. Photo: Nasa/AFP

The crew capsule lands in the West Texas desert, April 14, 2021. Photo: Blue Origin

A seat on the New Shepard capsule. Photo: Blue Origin

Billionaire Richard Branson came within ‘seconds’ of death on Alps charity climb with son

Sir Richard Branson on the charity climb in Alps. Photo: Twitter/Richard Branson

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson in space, luxury’s new frontier: as air travel is no longer special, billionaires turn to the stars for the ultimate once-in-a-lifetime experience

Billionaire Richard Branson floats in zero gravity on board Virgin Galactic’s passenger rocket plane VSS Unity after reaching the edge of space on July 11, launching a new era in luxury experiences. Photo: Virgin Galactic/Handout via Reuters

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos talks to the media about the New Shepard rocket booster and Crew Capsule mock-up at the 33rd Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, US in April 2017. Photo: Reuters

SpaceX owner Elon Musk said in December 2020 that he was “highly confident” his company would transport humans to Mars in about five years, according to CNBC. Photo: AFP via Getty Images/TNS

A SpaceX Falcon 9, with Nasa astronauts Doug Hurley and Robert Behnken in the Dragon crew capsule, lifts off from the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida on May 30, 2020. Photo: AP Photo

Billionaire Richard Branson reacts on board Virgin Galactic’s passenger rocket plane VSS Unity after reaching the edge of space above Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, US on July 11, 2021. Photo: Virgin Galactic via Reuters

SpaceShip Two Unity 22 under thrust heading towards space after separating from the carrier plane above Spaceport America, in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, US, on July 11, 2021. Photo: EPA-EFE/Virgin Galactic

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The richest person in the world Jeff Bezos is set to join the astronaut club on Tuesday
Mission comes days after Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson crossed the final frontier


Jeff Bezos, the richest person in the world, is set to join the astronaut club on Tuesday on the first crewed launch by Blue Origin.


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Explainer | How Jeff Bezos will soar into space, higher than Richard Branson

The richest person in the world Jeff Bezos is set to join the astronaut club on Tuesday Mission comes days after Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson crossed the final frontier

The richest person in the world Jeff Bezos is set to join the astronaut club on Tuesday

Mission comes days after Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson crossed the final frontier