Jeff Bezoz - Spaceflight
 

I sincerely hope they know what they're doing.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57386049

It's dangerous enough, but if they want to do it — why not?

At the end of the day its an Amazon delivery, so I'm sure it will land safely. Just at the wrong Landing Facility, they'll leave the capsule behind the shed and pop a card through the letter box.

Risky, but it's not a terrible way to incentivise its potential safety, sending up the company's founder. This is provided it doesn't detonate or something like many of SpaceX's pieces! :P

I hope they'll test it enough times to avoid the destiny of most of SpaceX prototypes

They already have, exhaustively.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Origin#Flights

Compared to the Falcon it’s a toy - straight up to just over the astronaut badge line and then separate from the capsule straight back down, leaving the capsule to get down on a parachute. It’s a tourist ride comparable to Virgin Galactic rather than an orbital launch system.

No orbital velocity to reach, no burn back to launch site required.

They have plans for orbital capable systems (New Glenn) and bid for the NASA moon lander (Blue Moon) but lost to SpaceX. A timeline for orbit is given of 2024, I’m not holding my breath.

Sorry, but Virgin Galactic does not go to the Karman Line.....the highest they have gone is 88km.
In the US the FAA and NASA use 80km as a jurisdictional boundary, as what the US recognizes as a countries sovereign territory....

The Karman Line is Internationally recognized as the boundary of space at 100m....Blue origin spacecraft has gone over 100km 13 times....

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...at-blue-origin

Sold! Bidder pays $28m for spare seat on space flight with Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin has sold the spare seat of the company’s 20 July New Shepard space rocket blast-off for $28m, the company announced on Saturday.

With 20 active bidders starting at $4.8m during the 10-minute auction, bids escalated in the final three minutes of the sale. Initially, some 7,600 people registered to bid from 159 countries, the company said.

The winner, whose identity has not been announced, will join the Amazon founder Bezos and his brother Mark on the flight….. The capsule will carry as many as six passengers, though the company has not yet revealed who else will be onboard……

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...lot-wally-funk

‘No one has waited longer’: trailblazing female pilot Wally Funk will go to space with Bezos

Wally Funk, a trailblazing female pilot denied the job of astronaut in the 1960s over her gender, will finally get the chance to fulfill her dreams of going into space.

Billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Thursday on Instagram that Funk will be part of a four-person crew set to be launched into space by Blue Origin during a 10-minute flight on his rocket New Shepard later this month.

Funk, 82, will be the oldest person ever to travel into space, after the late John Glenn set the current record at age 77 while aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to go up,” Funk said in a video interview posted on the company’s website.

Funk was one of the “Mercury 13” pilots who volunteered in 1961 to be part of a program to get women to qualify for Nasa’s astronaut program, independently led by William Randolph Lovelace, head of Nasa’s committee on life science.

At 21, Funk graduated third in her class after undergoing rigorous physical and mental tests created by Lovelace.

“They told me I had done better or completed the work faster than any of the guys,” Funk said in Bezos’ video.

The program was abruptly cancelled when the federal government decided women shouldn’t be allowed to use the military facilities needed for space training. None of the women ever made it into space – but now, Funk has the opportunity to do so on 20 July.

“No one has waited longer,” said Bezos in his post, calling Funk an “honored guest”.…..

Funk, a Texas resident, became the first female inspector for the Federal Aviation Administration in 1971, and the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board in 1974. Funk said she has taught over 3,000 people to fly.

“I can’t tell people that are watching how fabulous I feel to be picked by Blue Origin to go on this trip,” she said.

“You’re going to be an astronaut!” said an unnamed person in the video. “Finally,” replied Funk. “I can hardly wait.”

Ouch…..

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-sta...g-livestreams/

SpaceX tops off Starship launch tower during Blue Origin crew launch briefing

On Sunday morning, SpaceX began the process of installing the last prefabricated section of Starship’s skyscraper-sized ‘launch tower’ around the same time as startup Blue Origin kicked off a preflight briefing for its first crewed suborbital launch.

Though both events are almost entirely unconnected and have no immediate impact on each other, the simultaneity almost immediately triggered comparisons between one of the most important media briefings in Blue Origin’s 21-year history and an average busy day at SpaceX’s South Texas Starship factory and launch site. ….

As of July 2021, Blue Origin has completed just 15 New Shepard test flights – 14 of which were fully successful – in six years.

In the same period, SpaceX successfully recovered an orbital-class Falcon 9 booster for the first time, reused a Falcon booster on a commercial satellite launch, debuted Falcon Heavy, reused several orbital Cargo Dragon capsules three times each, debuted Crew Dragon, became the first company in history to launch astronauts, completed its first operational astronaut launch for NASA, hopped three Starship prototypes, flew five Starship prototypes to 10-15 km, successfully landed four Raptor-powered Starship prototypes, rolled out Starship’s first completed booster prototype, completed more than 100 successful orbital launches, flown the same Falcon 9 booster ten times (versus New Shepard’s record of seven flights), reused orbital-class boosters 68 times, created the world’s largest satellite constellation, and far, far more.

Along those lines, on Saturday, July 17th, SpaceX teams attached a massive crane to the seventh prefabricated section of a ‘launch tower’ that could eventually support Starship and Super Heavy stacking – and maybe even catch ships and boosters. On Sunday, not long after daybreak and about an hour before Blue Origin’s New Shepard-16 preflight briefing, that tower section lifted off under the watchful eye of several unofficial cameras operated by NASASpaceflight, LabPadre, and others.

By the end of Blue Origin’s briefing, most of which involved executives or senior employees reading from scripts and none of which offered a look at actual flight hardware or “astronaut” preparations, the eighth launch tower section was mostly in place, creating a structure some 135m (~440 ft) tall.

By the end of NASASpaceflight.com’s unofficial six-hour stream, the outlet’s excellent and unaffiliated coverage of SpaceX erecting part of a relatively simple tower for the seventh time had been viewed more than a quarter of a million times.

By the end of Blue Origin’s official preflight briefing for a crewed launch set to carry the richest person on Earth, the company had accrued around 20,000 views on YouTube….

Blast off in two minutes - will my pasty be ready to eat before they land, never mind launch...

And... they're back!

How many dollars is that a minute?

Glad someone with the ‘right stuff’ as opposed to the ‘folding green stuff’ got her ride. :E

Pretty remarkable job though :ok:

Classic Dan Dare spaceship (Eagle comic 1950)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_(British_comics)#/media/File:Eagle_1950_issue_1_front_page.jpg
I had the first copy, and now reality.

Looked like a bumpy landing…

Really? Difficult to see because of the dust but it looked like the thruster system (for want of a better description) pretty much killed the rate of descent at touchdown…

Nope, smooth as silk. The retro fire for about a second just before touchdown, cushioning the landing. Lots of dust but very soft.

Interesting, thank you wiggy and TURIN. Not having followed this too carefully, I now find the details to be amazing. I was sure that the thruster had either failed or gone off too late, compared to other landings I've seen.

As to the silhouette, though, I think Freud might have a word to say from beyond the grave.