Jeff Bezos touches space on the Blue Origin rocket

On the eve of the flight, the company, which is usually shy of the press, suddenly turned into a show biz, releasing videos and photos of the crew in bright blue. The original plans to accommodate a modest contingent press were thrown like a power rocket as the company invited dozens of reporters to a remote location in the West Texas desert, Bezos has more than 300,000 acres and even a mountain range.

At 7:25 a.m. Central Daylight Time, at the company’s starting point, passengers climbed five ladders, climbing to the height of a 160-foot reusable New Shepard rocket, taking a short break inside an “astronaut safety shelter” against fire. fire room, which can be used in case of emergency evacuations. Bezos then led the crew across a bridge — each of them crossing with a silver bell ringing — to the capsule in New Shepard, well, a sex toy. At 7:34, they got into the hatch and curled up. Funk pasted a postcard of his own as a Mercury 13 candidate to the window, intending to take a picture when he arrived in space. At 7:43 a.m., Blue Origin technicians closed the hatch and went down the porch. It was 21 minutes in T-min.

The previous two NASA suborbital launches — 60 years ago — did a lot to check gauges and flip switches. Bezos and his crew had nothing to worry about: New Shepard is completely driven by AI. They were able to see the countdown from personal screens on the sides of large windows designed for a luxurious view of the earth and space.

It may have reported some rain, but the day was horrible and clear. The countdown lasted only fifteen minutes; then the count began again. The system went through the last two minutes of checks, all done in an automatic sequence, and then a voice from the mission control began the countdown: “10, 9, 8, 7, 6 … the command engines start, 2 1.”

At 8:12 a.m., steam was thrown below the booster for a couple of seconds. “We have to climb,” he said from the small mission control room at the base. Then the rocket jumped like a dart, navigating upwards, until it was just a faint gleam that remained to be seen, until the donkey indicated a temporary hole in the New Shepard that crossed the sky.

Three minutes later, the capsule, RSS First Step, separated from the rocket and passed through the Earth’s atmosphere. This was it: the crew was weightless. They were space travelers. Even though the live stream didn’t provide real-time video to thousands of viewers online, you can still catch a glimpse of some of the audio that caught the crew by surprise and float.

“Holy cow!”

“Good God!”

“Look out the window!”

“Wow!”

The New Shepard rocket was already beginning to descend to Earth when the capsule was slowly making its way home. A sonic boom announced his return, and he landed safely on his pad in a blast of fire. Shortly afterwards, three red, white, and blue parachutes were deployed. “You have a very happy crew here, I want to know,” Bezos told the control room.

The capsule, slowing for a mile or two per hour, was left on the ground in the desert releasing a wide puff of smoke. The whole trip went smoothly, like a space traveler’s Quibi.

The Blue Origin recovery team has run their SUVs across the desert as they have been quick in the final meters to get the hatch out. And then, one by one, a retired crew emerged, screaming and shouting. The space geeks basically won a Super Bowl. Their families were there to greet them, as well as Lauren Sanchez Bezos ’girlfriend. Mark Bezos was formed first, then Daemen and then Funk, with his arms raised in the symbol of victory. It is clear that he had not yet returned to Earth. Eventually Jeff Bezos left and returned to Earth.