What do the richest man in the world, an 82-year-old pilot and an 18-year-old Dutchman have in common? They’re all getting on a spacecraft today. At 3 p.m. (Belgian time), the New Shepard launcher of Blue Origin, the space company of Jeff Bezos (57), the richest man in the world, must depart from a remote site in the western US state of Texas. He himself takes a few other space tourists with him, including the oldest and youngest ‘space travelers’ ever.
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Follow the space journey from 1.30 pm via HLN LIVE with the expert commentary of our science expert Martijn Peters
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The New Shepard rocket is intended to cause a capsule to fly to an altitude of 106 kilometers, or just into space. There, three minutes after take-off, the occupants can release their buckles and experience what weightlessness is. They can also peer at our planet and the darkness of space for several minutes.
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The launcher autonomously returns to a landing site north of the launch site while the capsule freefalls. Three huge parachutes and brake motors must ensure that she lands gently in the desert. The flight takes about eleven minutes in total.
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brothers
New Shepard is intended for space tourism and Bezos wants to put his company on the map with brilliance. He has decided to join the first manned flight himself, making him the richest person in space. Also be brother Mark (53) flies along. This is the first time two brothers go into space together.
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They have two more companions: the American aviation pioneer Wally Funk those with 82 years becomes the oldest woman and human in space and the Dutchman Oliver Daemen (18), the youngest.
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Initially, a seat would go to someone who had bid $28 million at an auction for the trip. But due to a “calendar conflict”, the unknown will only make his or her flight later.
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Space boundary
Blue Origin has competitors such as Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. The 71-year-old Briton has trumped 57-year-old Bezos, by declaring on July 11 the first manned test flight of its VSS Unity to do with it. However, the founder of Amazon will fly higher than the founder of the Virgin empire because he “only” reached 86 kilometers. Which actually makes it a suborbital flight, because 100 kilometers altitude is the limit of space.
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In September, SpaceX also plans to use its Crew Dragon capsule for space tourism for the first time.
A long-standing player in the space tourism market is Space Adventures, which sends space tourists with Russian Soyuz capsules to the International Space Station. The first was in April 2001 the American Dennis Tito.
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