Bezos Going to Space... Over 100km Altitude, 11 Minutes "New Milestone"

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] "It will be a new milestone in the space tourism industry."

Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man and founder of Amazon, is set to embark on a space flight. On the morning of the 20th at 6:30 a.m. Pacific Time (10 p.m. Korean time on the 20th), Bezos will take off toward space aboard the 'New Shepard' rocket from a launch site in a western Texas ranch area.

Bezos's space journey comes exactly 52 years after Apollo 11 first landed humans on the moon on July 20, 1969, and just 9 days after British billionaire Richard Branson, chairman of Virgin Group, succeeded in the first private space flight.

Major foreign media outlets have described this as "a new milestone in the space tourism industry." AFP called it "another important moment in the nascent space tourism industry," while The Washington Post (WP) said, "It took a long time, but we now have a perfect private space rocket."

◆Will the richest, oldest, and youngest astronauts in history be born? The New Shepard that Bezos will board is a reusable rocket developed by 'Blue Origin,' the space exploration company founded by Bezos.

Bezos aims to surpass the 80 km altitude defined by NASA and the FAA as the boundary of space, reaching up to 106 km. This is 20 km higher than the 86 km altitude reached by Branson during the first successful private space flight.

Photo by Blue Origin

The dome-shaped manned capsule mounted on top of the booster separates from the rocket at a certain altitude, allowing passengers to unbuckle their seat belts and experience near-weightlessness for 3 to 4 minutes. The total expected flight time is 10 to 11 minutes. Large windows designed for each seat allow simultaneous views of Earth and outer space.

New Shepard has conducted 15 round-trip test flights so far. Although the booster crashed on the first launch, the following 14 launches saw the booster land safely without damage. A Blue Origin engineer said, "It is a very safe space flight rocket that I would put my own children on."

This flight will carry Bezos, his brother Mark, 82-year-old oldest astronaut Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Dutch youth Oliver Daemen. If successful, the flight will mark the simultaneous birth of the richest, oldest, and youngest astronauts in history.

Funk was one of the 'Mercury 13,' women who missed NASA's space flight opportunities in the 1960s simply because they were women. Daemen, a Dutch physics student starting this fall, is Blue Origin's first paying customer. He will take the space trip in place of his businessman father, who won the ticket through Blue Origin's space travel auction.

Jeff Bezos is aboard the New Shepard crew capsule at the 33rd Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs in April 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

In an interview before the flight, Bezos said, "I'm really not nervous. I'm excited and curious," adding, "We have trained and are ready. I feel really good." He continued, "I think I will be roughly the 570th astronaut. This is not a competition, but about paving the way to space for future generations."

◆Two more flights planned this year... Intensifying space competition among billionaires If this launch succeeds, Blue Origin plans two more flights this year and more than six space tourism flights next year.

Blue Origin is advancing projects including the New Shepard manned exploration vehicle for private space tourists, the large commercial rocket 'New Glenn' capable of flying to geostationary orbit, the lunar lander 'Blue Moon,' and space station development.

Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, said, "Just as Amazon took seven years to make its first quarterly profit and nine years to make its first annual profit, Blue Origin will focus on long-term investment rather than immediate profits."

Besides Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, are also pursuing private space travel businesses.

On the 11th, Branson reached an altitude of 88 km aboard Virgin Galactic's 'Unity,' experienced about four minutes of microgravity, and returned safely to Earth.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.