Jeff Bezos’s space tourism company, Blue Origin, completed its fifth manned launch on Saturday after a New Shepard rocket’s backup system that failed to meet expectations delayed the trip last month. Blue Origin’s fourth flight successfully landed in March in West Texas after carrying six passengers on a 10-minute journey to the edge of space. “It was an honor to fly with this special crew of explorers and true pioneers today,” said Phil Joyce, senior vice president of New Shepard. “Each mission is an opportunity to give six others the transformative experience of witnessing the beauty and fragility of our planet from space. The company’s suborbital pleasure ride takes approximately 10 minutes from takeoff to landing and reaches an altitude of approximately 350,000 feet (106 km), giving passengers a few moments of weightlessness before descending back to Earth for a parachute landing. The best of Express PremiumTop quality
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Premium is part of an ongoing effort by a handful of companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson-founded Virgin Galactic, that are striving to make space travel a reality. Until now, Axiom, SpaceX and NASA have touted such missions as a milestone in expanding privately funded space-based commerce, constituting what industry experts call the “low-Earth orbit economy” or “low-Earth orbit economy.” LEO economy” for short. The International Space Station (ISS) has hosted several wealthy space tourists over the years. Analysts applauded Saturday’s latest string of ambitious rocket-powered expeditions funded by private equity capital and wealthy passengers rather than taxpayer dollars six decades after the start of the space age.
