Blue Origin launches 6 tourists to the edge of space

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched six space tourists on a high-speed dash to the edge of space and back Friday, giving the passengers — including a husband and wife making their second flight — about three minutes of weightlessness and an out-of-this world view before the capsule made a parachute descent to touchdown at the company’s west Texas flight facility.

Science popularizer and TV host Emily Calandrelli shed tears of elation after landing, telling an interviewer “oh my gosh, when we got to weightlessness, I immediately turned upside down and looked at the planet, and then there was so much blackness, there was so much space! I didn’t expect to see so much space!”

“And I kept saying, like, that’s our planet,” she added, wiping away tears. “That’s our planet. It was the same feeling I got when my kids were born, and I was like, that’s my baby, that’s my baby. I had that same feeling like where I’m seeing it for the first time. It was just beautiful. Oh my God.”

Calandrelli, developer Marc Hagle and his wife Sharon, both making their second New Shepard flight, and three other entrepreneurs — Austin Litteral, James Russell and Henry Wolfond — blasted off from Bezos’ sprawling ranch near Van Horn, Texas, at 10:30 a.m. EST. Accelerated to nearly three times the speed of sound, the crew capsule was released to fly on its own about two-and-a-half minutes after liftoff.

As it continued coasting upward, the passengers were able to unstrap and float about the cabin during about three minutes of weightlessness, taking in the view of Earth below and space above from the largest windows ever built into a spacecraft.

“We got to MECO (main engine cutoff) and it was like BOOM! I’m not scared any more!” Calandrelli said. “That kick in your pants from (capsule-booster) separation is wild. It is wild. I had to tell my brain, like, this is normal, like, this is expected, it’s supposed to be a kick in the pants.”

The launching marked Blue Origin’s 28th New Shepard flight and the ninth with passengers on board. The company has now launched 47 individuals to space, including Bezos and three who have flown twice. It’s not known how much Blue Origin charges for a ticket, but the company said Litteral won his seat in a contest sponsored by Whatnot, a livestream shopping platform.

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