Blue Origin will launch six more people on a quick, 10-minute flight to suborbital space Thursday from West Texas. A popular YouTuber and the first Egyptian to fly above the internationally-recognized boundary of space are among the commercial passengers.
The launch is set for 9:50 a.m. EDT (8:50 a.m. CDT; 1350 GMT) Thursday, about 20 minutes later than originally planned after overnight thunderstorms affected preparations for the flight, Blue Origin said.
The suborbital flight Thursday will be Blue Origin’s sixth human space launch, bringing to 31 the total number of people the company has ferried to the edge of space. Blue Origin’s first human mission last July carried billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and three co-passengers.
A single-stage New Shepard rocket built for the space tourism and suborbital research market will carry the six passengers to an altitude above 62 miles (100 kilometers), the edge of space as defined by the international record-keeping body for aeronautics.
The six passengers include Coby Cotton, one of five cofounders of the popular Texas-based YouTube channel “Dude Perfect.” Cotton’s seat was arranged through MoonDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization whose members voted on who should represent them in a seat purchased by the group.
The Dude Perfect crew held a model rocket launch competition to determine which of the cofounders would get the MoonDAO seat on Blue Origin’s rocket. Cotton, 35, had the highest-flying rocket and won the ticket.
Sara Sabry, a 29-year-old Egyptian engineer working in Berlin, was selected for her seat by a nonprofit called Space for Humanity, which seeks to expand access to space for all people. She will become the first Egyptian to fly to space.
From left to right: Sara Sabry, Steve Young, Coby Cotton, Vanessa O’Brien, Clint Kelly III, and Mário Ferreira will ride Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket to suborbital space. Credit: Blue Origin
Mário Ferreira, 54, will also take a seat on the Blue Origin crew capsule on top of the New Shepard rocket. He is a wealthy Portuguese investor and entrepreneur.
The other passengers include Vanessa O’Brien, an experienced British-American mountaineer and adventurer who will aim to become the first women to reach the top of Mount Everest, the deepest point in the world’s oceans, and fly in space.
Clint Kelly III, technology pioneer who helped pave the way for driverless cars, is also flying to space Thursday. And Florida native Steve Young, a businessman who made his future in the telecom industry, will round out the six-seat crew cabin.
In preparation for Thursday morning’s mission, Blue Origin rolled the New Shepard to the launch pad overnight and raised it vertical for final checkouts. The single-stage rocket stands about 60 feet, or 18 meters, tall and is powered by one BE-3 engine burning a mix of super-cold liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.
The launch team loaded the cryogenic propellants into the New Shepard booster early Saturday, while the six passengers finished preparations at a nearby facility the company calls “Astronaut Village.”
The passengers, who won’t pressurized spacesuits for their 10-minute ride to space, will travel to the launch pad and board the crew capsule on top of the New Shepard booster about 30 minutes before liftoff. The ground support team will close the hatch at about T-minus 24 minutes, then moved to a fallback position for launch.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket on its launch pad north of Van Horn, Texas. Credit: Blue Origin
The rocket’s BE-3 engine will ignite and throttle up to full power, then clamps will release to allow the New Shepard booster to begin a vertical climb away from its launch pad. The BE-3 will produce about 110,000 pounds of thrust at full power, firing for about 2 minutes, 20 seconds, to propel the New Shepard and its six passengers toward space.
After engine cutoff, the crew capsule separated from the booster to begin independent arcing trajectories, passing above the von Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space — at an altitude of about 62 miles (100 kilometers) for a couple of minutes. That gave the passengers in the capsule time to unstrap from their seats and float around the pressurized cabin, enjoying expansive views through the largest windows ever flown in space.
The passengers will return to their seats and strap in before the spacecraft falls back into the thicker layers of the atmosphere, bracing for parachute deployment and touchdown on the desert floor a few miles from the launch site. The entire flight from liftoff to landing will last about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, the reusable booster will make its own precision descent back to Earth, targeting a propulsive vertical touchdown on a landing pad a few minutes before the return of the capsule. The flight will mark the 22nd launch of a New Shepard booster, and the eighth flight by this particular rocket.
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