Blue Origin launches and lands the first space tourism rocket of the year, with human planes in sight

Private spaceflight company Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin has launched and landed their New Shepard vehicle on its latest mission, NS-14, with the hope that human flights will begin soon.

The mission was launched today, Thursday, Jan. 14 at 12.17 PM East Time from the company’s Launch Site in West Texas.

In the mission, the company launched an 18-meter-high rocket capsule to the end of space, one that is designed to eventually carry people at a cost of $ 200,000 or so per ticket.

Before it reached a peak of nearly 107 kilometers, officially in space, the capsule had detached from the rocket, the moment that future space travelers will find without weight on the short journey to and from space. from the place.

Both the capsule and the elevator then began to descend to Earth, with the latter restarting the engine on board to return safely to the ground about seven minutes after launch. , with the help of wings to guide it.

Meanwhile, the capsule safely returned to Earth through a parachute, where it landed calmly back on the ground.

While New Shepard has flown 13 hours earlier, most recently in October 2020, this mission saw the capsule decorated “with an update for the astronaut experience as the program approached human space flight, ”According to Blue Origin.

“The upgrades include improvements to environmental features such as acoustic and temperature control inside the capsule, crew display panels, and speakers with a microphone and push-to-speak button at each seat. ”

The mission also included a “fake man” on board, nicknamed Mannequin Skywalker, who sat in one of the six capsule seats.

Also on board were 50,000 postcards written by students from the world census, some of which were in the pockets of the kidneys.

A date for human flights has not yet been set, but Blue Origin is expected to aim to start sometime later this year.

Bezos, who has traded places with competitor and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over the past few days for the title of “richest man in the world”, is urging the company to start imminent orbital flights as well.

This will be with a new rocket called New Glenn, named for astronaut John Glenn, who was recently selected by NASA as a potential rocket for future missions.

For now all eyes are on New Shepard, and whether the rocket can finally achieve its goal of launching humans sometime in 2021.