The little New Shepard rocket in Blue Origin has taken off this Monday for the eleventh time with six people on board. On this occasion there were six women. Among them, pop superstar Katy Perry, who has taken the opportunity to promote the opening concert of his tour in Mexico.
A space flight without men. Blue Origin’s NS-31 mission has been the first space launch without men since 1963, when the Soviet Union put the first woman in space orbit: Valentina Tereshkova.
Chosen by Lauren Sanchez, the fiance of Jeff Bezos, to “inspire the coming generations”, five women and Sanchez herself flew over the Kárman line (the official border of the space), floating in the capsule for three minutes before falling back to the ground with parachute.
In addition to Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez, among the crew members were Gayle King (co -exposed “CBS Mornings”), Aisha Bowe (former NASA rocket scientist), Amanda Nguyen (researcher in Bioastronautics) and Kerianne Flynn (film producer).
Short, but intense. The six women traveled to the launch platform in two Rivian electric trucks, the rival brand of Tesla financed by Amazon and Jeff Bezos. Bezos was driving one of them. They made a brief stop in front of the rocket for some photos and then uploaded to the capsule to take off.
The New Shepard rocket ignited its hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine at 13:30 UTC. Two and a half minutes later, it detached from the capsule, which amounted beyond the border of the space, up to 107 kilometers above sea level. Oprah, Kris Jenner or Khloe Kardashian looked up from the public.
On the 7:30 minute, the rocket landed on its own. A minute later, the capsule opened the three parachutes to cushion its descent, between shouts of joy of the crew, who touched earth over the 10th minute. The suborbital flight was brief, but intense, judging by the micro open inside the capsule.
Promotional moment. Katy Perry took advantage of the minutes in the space to sing “What a Wonderful World” and reveal part of the setlist of his new tour, which will begin in Mexico; turning a space launch into promotion, as if it had gone to El Hormiguero.
The singer and Gayle King have joined the growing list of celebrities who have flown to the space with Blue Origin. Jesús Calleja was in the previous mission, NS-30, as part of a documentary financed by Amazon Prime Video and Mediaset. William Shatner, Captain Kirk in “Star Trek”, also did in 2021 invited by Jeff Bezos, the company’s owner.
Laura Shepard (Alan Shepard’s daughter, the first American in space, which gives name to the rocket), Ed Dwight (the black astronaut who never flew) or the youtuber Coby Cotton (of the Cabel Channel Perfect) have also crossed the karm line aboard the New Shepard rocket. Many of them as part of an effort of Blue origin to promote its tourist flights.
Meanwhile, in Spacex. Spacex has had a small number of totally private missions. The first was Inspiration4, financed by businessman Jared Isaacman, who is one step away from directing NASA.
The Missions of the AXIOM company, operated by Spacex, to the International Space Station mix services for space agencies (ESA in this way to some of its astronauts) with space tourists willing to live a couple of weeks as authentic Crews of the ISS.
Polaris Dawn, again financed by Isaacman, made history with the flight to a higher altitude from the Apollo missions and the first commercial extravehicular activity in history. More recently, Fram2 launched a Bitcoin tycoon, Chun Wang, and his friends on the first flight in polar orbit.
De Dennis Tito a Katy Perry. As the reusable rockets (and spatial aircraft such as Virgin Galactic) reduce the cost of launching people into space, more and more millionaires fulfill their dream of seeing the earth from above as the New York did Dennis Tito, the first space tourist, in 2001.
Tito paid $ 20 million to fly to the ISS for eight days aboard a Soyuz Russian ship. His trip opened the door to a handful of extremely rich individuals who followed their steps during the next decade: Mark Shuttleworth (South African, 2002), Gregory Olsen (American, 2005), Anousheh Ansari (Iraní and First Space Tourist, 2006), Charles Simonyi (Hungarian, 2007 and 2009), Richard Garriott (British 2008) and Guy Laliberté (Canadian and founder of the Circo del Sol, in 2009).
The Price of a seat in the New Shepard rocket is confidential, but it is estimated at just over one million dollars. Little more than a flight in the Richard Branson space aircraft company costs, but possibly less than it will cost to fly to orbit in a few years, when more companies dominate reuse and the first commercial space stations are operational.
Imagen | Blue Origin
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