Texas, July 20: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his crew successfully completed a spaceflight on Tuesday morning (local time). They were flying on the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin.
“Congratulations to all of Team Blue past and present on reaching this historic moment in spaceflight history. This first astronaut crew wrote themselves into the history books of space, opening the door through which many after will pass. #GradatimFerociter #NSFirstHumanFlight,” tweeted Blue Origin.
The 10-minute flight went up more than 60 miles above Earth. The crew members aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard will hold a press conference at 11 am ET following their successful spaceflight this morning, reported CNN. On board today’s flight were Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, pilot Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen. Jeff Bezos Shares Video of Himself With Other Crew Members Floating in Space in Zero Gravity, Captions it ‘This Is How It Starts’.
After decades of waiting, Wally Funk finally accomplished her dream of flying to space, becoming the oldest person to do so. The 82-year-old pilot volunteered as a member of the “Mercury 13” program, otherwise known as the “Women in Space Program,” in February 1961, which was a privately-funded effort intended to begin training women to fly in NASA’s earliest space programs, reported CNN.
“I got ahold of NASA four times, and said, ‘I want to become an astronaut,’ but nobody would take me,” Funk said. “I didn’t think I would ever get to go up. Nothing has ever gotten in my way. They say, ‘Wally, you’re a girl, you can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Guess what, doesn’t matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it,’ and I like to do things that nobody’s ever done before.”
Funk has extensive experience piloting aircraft, logging over 19,600 flying hours and teaching more than 3,000 people how to fly private and commercial aircraft.
Also making history in the Blue Origin spaceflight was 18-year-old recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest person to travel to space, reported CNN. Daemen was Blue Origin’s first paying customer, and his father, an investor, purchased his ticket.
Daemen replaced a mystery bidder who agreed to pay $28 million for a ticket, but who had to reschedule for a later mission because of “scheduling conflicts.” Earlier this month, Richard Branson became the first person to ride into space aboard a rocket he helped fund — beating Bezos by nine days.
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