He tweeted his congratulations to the team afterwards.īezos says his goal is to move the world's major industries that are damaging the planet to space in order to preserve Earth's environment. The comment that is likely to sting critics who say the commercial space race between Bezos and fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Richard Branson is elitist and unfair when so many others will never be able to afford the experience.īezos' Blue Origin crew traveled 66 miles above the surface of Earth - 13 miles higher than Virgin Galactic billionaire Branson. Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon CEO earlier this year and will now split his time between Blue Origin and his environmental charity, said at a press conference after the flight: 'For every amazon customer, you guys paid for all this so thank you from the bottom of my heart.' The 10 minute journey cost $5.5billion - $550million per minute. They then returned to earth with parachutes controlling the pace of their descent, touching down in the Texas desert at 9.22am EST, 10 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff. They were joined by 18-year-old Oliver Daemen - the word's first paying customer to buy his flight - and 82-year-old Wally Funk, who passed NASA's space program in the 1960s but never made it to space because the women's flight was canceled. They had written 'Hi' and 'Mom' on their palms and put their hands together for their mother Jacklyn while in space. They ascended for four minutes before the New Shepard rocket booster separated from their capsule, leaving them floating in zero gravity for four minutes.īezos and Mark floated about, pretended to swim and tossed skittles in each other's mouths while in the air, they said afterwards. The world's richest man Jeff Bezos described his journey to space as the 'perfect mission' and a 'tiny little step' in his masterplan to build a road to space where he thinks the world's major industries will be able to operate in the future to save planet Earth.īezos and the crew of Blue Origin took off from their base at Van Horn, Texas, at 9.12am EST on Tuesday, the 52nd anniversary of the moon landing, 12 minutes behind schedule.
#Jeff bezos blue origin rocket launch full#
For comparison, suborbital tourism competitor Virgin Galactic charges $450,000 for a seat aboard its VSS Unity space plane, which has not yet begun full commercial operations.
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It's unclear how much it costs to fly on New Shepard, by the way Blue Origin has not divulged its ticket prices.
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Blue Origin launches Michael Strahan and crew of 5 on record-setting suborbital spaceflight In photos: William Shatner launches to space on Blue Origin's New Shepard Jeff Bezos: Blue Origin and Amazon founder