Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origins space trip was out of this world – everything you need to know about the retired Amazon CEO’s ride on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight

Jul 21 , 2021

Jeff Bezos was one of four passengers on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight, blasted off into zero gravity by his own New Origins space tourism firm on July 20. Photo: Reuters

Richard Branson might have beaten Bezos to space, but he didn’t pass the fabled Kármán line – Elon Musk’s SpaceX will blast off next

Bezos was joined on the historic flight by his brother Mark, 18-year-old Dutch high school graduate Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk

Jeff Bezos just joined the very small cohort of people who have launched into space and gazed at Earth from above.

The richest man on Earth briefly left the planet early Tuesday morning aboard a New Shepard rocket designed and built by Blue Origin, the space flight company Bezos founded in 2000. The vehicle had flown 15 times before, but never with people on board; this was Blue Origin’s first passenger flight.

Jeff Bezos wore googles owned by Amelia Earhart into space ... because he could. Photo: Reuters

The company is hoping for many more, though – it plans to fly tourists regularly on New Shepard but has yet to open ticket sales.

Bezos flew to space alongside his brother Mark; 18-year-old Dutch high school graduate Oliver Daemen, whose father paid for the third seat; and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old aviator who trained to go to space in the 1960s but was ultimately denied the opportunity because she was a woman.

Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk were the first people to go into space on a Blue Origin craft, on July 20. Photo: Blue Origin/TNS

The group lifted off at 9:12am Eastern Time from a launch pad in West Texas. The New Shepard’s engines roared to life, and the rocket heaved itself off the ground, screaming through the atmosphere for three minutes. Bezos and his companions were pinned to their seats as the feeling of Earth’s gravity grew three times stronger than normal.

Then the rocket booster separated from the capsule, giving it a final push past the Kármán line – an imaginary boundary 62 miles (100 kilometres) above sea level, where many experts say space begins.

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos was launched with three crew members aboard a New Shepard rocket on the world’s first unpiloted suborbital flight from Blue Origin’s Launch Site 1 near Van Horn, Texas, US, on July 20. Photo: Reuters

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