Blue Origin completed a flight for the history books on Tuesday morning.
On the 52nd anniversary of the moon landing, Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos realized his own dream of flying to space.
“I’m so excited and curious,” Bezos said before the trip. “You know, everybody who has been to space, every astronaut comes back, and they say it changed them somehow.”
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The pilotless, 11-minute journey reached the edge of outer space within three minutes.
The crew included Bezos’ brother Mark, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, now the world’s youngest astronaut and first paid civilian in space.
However, no one waited longer for their astronaut wings than 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk, who became the oldest person in space.
Funk was a member of the “Mercury 13” – a group of thirteen women who successfully underwent the same screening tests as the astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury, but didn’t get the opportunity to fly to space, until now.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get it up there,” Funk said.
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Bezos recently made history with Blue Origin’s first human flight in West Texas aboard the New Shepard. He says he’ll continue to build on that success in Florida with the company’s New Glenn rocket.
“They’ve got a very large rocket manufacturing facility here and a very large launch pad,’ said Dale Ketcham of Space Florida. “They’re going to be putting a lot of people and payloads into space from the Cape very soon, so there’s no way this wasn’t good for us.”
The crew said all precautions were in place.
Our astronauts have completed training and are a go for launch. #NSFirstHumanFlight pic.twitter.com/rzkQgqVaB6
— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 19, 2021
The New Shepard also plans to later provide the public with chances to fly to space to support nonprofits.
Space Florida said the current interest in space travel is something the state can only gain from.
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The spaceflight lifted off from Texas just after 9 a.m.
Watch the launch again below:
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