New Shepard spacecraft, Blue Origin’s reusable sub-orbital rocket which is designed to take passengers as high as out of Earth’s atmosphere has successfully launched and landed on its second test flight on Monday as Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, announced.
In fact, Bezos told CBS News that he is ‘looking forward’ to riding into space himself once Blue Origin starts doing business.
"I've been wanting to do that since I was five years old. When I talk to astronauts, they tell me that being in space changes you. You see the Earth in a different way, you see yourself in a different way, they describe the experience as being very meaningful,” Bezos, Blue Origin owner, told Charlie Rose happily on his program, "CBS This Morning."
"You've seen a lot of rockets take off in your time, but you've never seen one land. The rocket you see behind me is completely reusable. That's a game changer, because it changes the cost structure of space travel completely,” he said.
"So I want to see the Earth and see its thin atmosphere, I want to look out into space, I want to feel weightlessness and float around and do somersaults, all those things. But I think it's probably more the way the astronauts describe how it changes you that makes me so excited about the experience."
The rocket and capsule was launched on Monday at 12:21 p.m. EST (GMT-5) from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site.’ The New Shepard spacecraft has a variable-thrust BE-3 engine, which generates 110,000 pounds of push that booststhe spacecraft out of the lower atmosphere, reaching a velocity of 3.72 times the speed of sound, according to CBS News.
"We obviously want to complete our test program first. So we're probably a few years away from selling tickets, at least from flying our first astronaut. We're not releasing prices at this time. But we're getting close, and we're really excited about where we are,” Bezos explained.
What do you think of the latest project of Amazon’s big boss? Will you pay a hefty price just to have a glimpse of Earth from the outside even if your life is at risk?
