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posted by martyb on Tuesday July 20 2021, @06:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the flight-has-it-ups-and-downs dept.

[2021-07-20 14:41:25 UTC] UPDATE: Flight had a short hold at (IIRC) T-15:00 then proceeded to have a safe ignition, liftoff, flight, and separation. Booster landed successfully under powered descent. A few minutes later the capsule coasted to apogee (maximum altitude), began its descent, deployed parachutes, and landed nominally. All crew disembarked safely. Congratulations to all involved!]

According to Wikipedia, the capsule reached apogee of 105.671 km (65.6612 mi). On board were the oldest (Wally Funk, 82) and youngest (Oliver Daemen, 18) people to ever reach space. Also on board were Blue Origin owner Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos.

Original story follows, unchanged.


Blue Origin set for historic first human flight of its New Shepard system:

Officials with the rocket company Blue Origin said they remain on track for their first human spaceflight on Tuesday, which will carry founder Jeff Bezos and three other passengers on a suborbital hop 100 km above West Texas.

Steve Lanias, the lead flight director for the mission, said during a call with reporters that engineers completed a "Flight Readiness Review" for the launch over the weekend and found the New Shepard rocket and capsule to be in perfect condition. Weather, too, looks reasonable with any early morning storms expected to pass before the anticipated liftoff time of 8 am CT (13:00 UTC).

Bezos and the other three passengers—his brother, Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and a paying customer from the Netherlands named Oliver Daemen—underwent about 14 hours of training this weekend across two days. Their flight will be entirely autonomous. After launch the capsule will separate from the rocket, and the passengers will have about three minutes of weightlessness before they must strap back into their seats for the return to Earth. Upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere the passengers will experience about 5 Gs as gravity exerts itself on the returning vehicle.

[...] For Tuesday's flight, the company will provide a webcast, which is expected to begin about 90 minutes before the anticipated liftoff time. So the webcast should go live at 6:30 am local time in Texas, or about 11:30 UTC.

The webcast is scheduled to be available on YouTube: New Shepard First Human Flight.

NB: Virgin Galactic's flight on 2021-05-11[*] reached an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) which is the altitude at which NASA issues pilot's wings. Many noted the flight failed to reach the Kármán line boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space which is defined to be 100 km (62 miles). New Shepard's flight is scheduled to reach the Kármán line.

[*] SoylentNews coverage of Virgin Galactic's flight.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:52PM (4 children)

    by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @03:52PM (#1158292) Journal

    I'd have loved Mr. Bezos to roll out to the pad with a ready to go super heavy lift man-rated spacecraft capable of reaching the outer planets.

    He has chosen to take a slower and more incremental development approach, and that's probably a wise choice. Making a bigger rocket exponentially increases the cost. Making an orbital rocket exponentially increases the cost. It's smart, but not sexy, to get the suborbital stuff nailed down before stretching up and out. This makes even more sense when you think about their future competition. SpaceX has blown up a lot of rockets, and is proud of it. Not having that legacy in the back of customer's minds could be a competitive advantage for Blue Origin in the future. We'll see.

    (Full disclosure: I'm a huge SpaceX fan.)
       

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @11:11PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20 2021, @11:11PM (#1158493)

    There is nothing wise about it. Blue Origin has squandered a staggering amount of time and resources for so little gain when they could have been so much more.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:57AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:57AM (#1158595)

      Not really, the point of it isn't to get into space, the point of it is to be Bezos' excuse for stealing all the wealth from workers. By that measure it's been hugely successful and the longer it takes, the more successful it is.

      • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:19PM (1 child)

        by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:19PM (#1158740) Journal

        Have you stopped to consider if that Bezos "stealing all the wealth from workers" meme is true? It's been three years since they upped their starting wage to $15 per hour. Since they've done that all of the warehouse logistics jobs in my area have done the same. People won't even apply for under $13. That's put a huge amount of money in worker's pockets.

        I'm not arguing that Amazon fulfillment centers aren't hard places to work. They are. They pay a living wage though; that's a good thing, and other companies with far poorer CEOs should step up and do it too.

        "But he has soo much more money than the workers?"
        And? His money is in Amazon stock, and his wealth comes from holding that stock for almost two and a half decades. He held it back when they were just a bookstore and losing money hand over fist. He still held in the .com bust when every financial analyst predicted they were going to die any minute. He killed the stock price by reinvesting all of the company's profits back into AWS and shareholders were outraged. All the while he kept taking his $82,000 per year salary and accruing stock. His bet was right, and he shouldn't be punished for that. That opportunity for wealth creation still exists. Even the fulfillment center workers get RSUs, if their state allows it.

        Lets go pick on the dynastic wealth of billionaires that inherited it, not the ones that are useful to society.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Friday July 23 2021, @10:11PM

          by Pav (114) on Friday July 23 2021, @10:11PM (#1159485)

          Bezo's personal brand was hurt so badly by those terrible conditions (eg. standby ambulance becauses it was cheaper than installing airconditioning, workers forced to sh*t and piss in containers, hiding COVID infections to keep employees working without even providing them PPE, intimidating/sacking workers for trying to organise etc...) that he has stepped down as Amazon CEO to go on a charm offensive. Bezos is so tone deaf (and swarmed with brown-nosers) that he thinks this dick rocket ride will help. Internal documents (can't remember if they were leaked, required in court or whatever) have said Amazon works employees at burnout level because they're fungible... they're EXPECTED to be used up, health destroyed etc... Bezos knew he could just get new ones.