Tomorrow is another billionaire space day as Amazon founder, and richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos and three other passengers aboard the pilotless Blue Origin will rocket to the edge of space in his Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft. Of course, let's not forget that another billionaire, Richard Branson decided that he would take an hour-long jaunt on his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity Space Plane nine days earlier, apparently not at all in competition with Jeffy boy. 🙄 Space tourism is on the up and up and everyone is interested.
Jeff Bezos's adventure will be live-streamed from lift-off, scheduled for 9 a.m. (ET), if all goes according to plan.
Accompanying Bezos will be his brother Mark Bezos, 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk, and 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen, who replaces the anonymous winner of an auction who bid $28 million and discovered they had a scheduling conflict. 😳 "I'm sorry mate, I just couldn't move this meeting, can we do the whole 'space' thing next week?"
Space flight is approximately 10,000-times more dangerous than flying on a commercial plane. Blue Origin has several safety features in case of in-flight failures. The capsule is programmed to detach in case of emergencies and parachute safely back to earth. A source said, “The capsule is the safest spaceflight system. If a system fails, you have a backup system. And, in most cases, a backup to the backup system.”
Still, would you take the risk to see the stars up close, or are you good viewing from here?
And just for fun, here's a picture of Jeff with Lizzo.