World’s richest person, Jeff Bezos, made space history on 20 July, 2021, 14:30 WAT, as the richest billionaire astronaut ever.
The history was made together with 82-year-old Wally Funk as the oldest and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen as the youngest person in space.
Left to right: Daemen, Funk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos
The flight, which was automated, without a pilot, lasted 11 minutes in all, out of which they unstrapped and spent three minutes in weightlessness.
Bezos, owner of Blue Origin aerospace company that organised the flight with a Combo capsule powered by their New Shepard rocket, further made history with this first fee-paying sub-orbital space tour.
Virgin Galactic had two pilots with its owner, Richard Branson, and three members of staff as Mission Specialists in its sub-orbital flight on 11 July, 2021.
Non of them paid a space tourist’s fare for that flight.
Oliver Daemen, one of the three astronauts with Jeff Bezos in the Blue Origin’s space tourism flight was a fee-paying passenger.
His bid was second to that of the auction bid winner who paid $28 million for a seat in the flight but could not make it due to “scheduling conflicts” and will be in the next flight.
Oliver Daemen would have been in the next flight but was drafted to replace the auction bid winner.
The capsule carrying them separated from the one-stage New Shepard rocket 76 kilometres and continued to 106 kilometres before floating down and landing with parachutes in the desert by the launch site.
The rocket earlier made a controlled vertical landing, two miles from the launch site and, like the capsule, is ready for re-use.
That date of July 20, 2021 coincides with the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s Apollo 11 Moon landing.
The social media have not lost attention on what is regarded as the phallic profile of the New Shepard rocket and Combo capsule.
The capsule is designed as a dome and with the broadest windows in a spacecraft so that it can sit as many as six sight-seeing passengers.
New Origin chose the design from a hundred others to give the capsule a round tip with a broad base and a sausage shape for the rocket to maximise stability and reduce drag.
Round and narrow surfaces usually have less drag than flat and wider ones when going up.
Also, New Shepard just taking a capsule to the edge of space does not have to be large and very long as other rockets taking a spacecraft far into orbit which carry more propellants to power their flight.
The first billionaire in space is Charles Simonyi of Microsoft Office.
He went orbital, twice, with the Russians.
Sir Richard Branson became the second billionaire in space but, the first with his company, Virgin Galactic’s spacecraft, on 11 July, 2021 reaching an altitude of 53.5 miles over the edge of space.
Jeff Bezos stands out as not just the third billionaire in space and second with his company’s spacecraft but, the richest person ever in space.
By the time of the flight, Bezos was worth $207.9 billion and is the first man to cross the $200 billion mark.
Branson was worth $6.3 billion; Simonyi, $5.09 billion.
The other billionaire, orbital space enthusiast and owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, was worth $165.9 billion.
Sir Richard Branson may have beaten Bezos in the renewed billionaires’ space race by travelling to space nine days earlier but, there is still plenty of history made in Jeff Bezos’ flight.
BRANSON “STEALS” BILLIONAIRES’ SPACE TOURISM SHOW
Billionaire Richard Branson traveled to the edge of space aboard his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity 22 spaceship ahead of two other billionaires – Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk – who all planned travelling to space in their (company’s) spacecraft.
Liftoff was planned for 15:00 WAT, 11 July, 2021 from the facility in Spaceport America in southern New Mexico, US, but was delayed by an hour and half due to weather concerns.
Richard Branson’s mission was the 22nd test flight for Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spacecraft, four of which were crewed.
The journey has not been easy.
The company lost a pilot in a test flight crash in 2014; improved and built a safer spacecraft which was named Unity by Professor Stephen Hawking.
Test flights were flown from then to 2018 when the spacecraft reached the edge of space.
On 25 June, 2021 the US Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, granted Virgin Galactic licence to commence space tourism with fee-paying passengers.
Virgin Galactic craft was crewed and tested three times to space and back before it was granted licence by FAA.
It attained an altitude of 55.55 miles in the last test flight in May, 2021 before the Branson mission.
Left to right: Dave Mackay, Colin Bennett, Beth Moses, Richard Branson, Sirisha Bandla, and Michael Masucci
Sir Branson traveled with pilots Dave MacKay and Michael Masucci, as well as Virgin’s Chief Astronaut Instructor, Beth Moses; Operations Engineer, Colin Bennett, and Virgin’s Vice President for Government Affairs/Research Operations, Sirisha Bandla.
Sirisha Bandla, 33, was born in Guntur district, Andhra Pradesh, India, and is causing great excitement back home for being part of Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight.
Bandla is the second woman born in India, after Kalpana Chawla who died in the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster in 2003, to travel to space (Sunita Williams, born in US of Indian-American father has also been to space).
The Virgin Galactic style is unique in space missions.
The spacecraft is attached to a mothership which is an aircraft that taxis and takes-off in a runway like other airplanes.
It then disengages the spacecraft at an altitude of about 45,000 feet.
On disengagement, the spacecraft turns on its two rocket-powered engines and goes up to Mach 3 to the boundary of space, letting the passengers see the Earth’s curvature and for few minutes enjoy weightlessness, before flying back to Earth and landing on the same runway from where the mothership that carried it took-off.
This air-launch is considered by Virgin Galactic, a more efficient and economical method than using rockets to launch a sub-orbital spacecraft.
Musk, Bezos, Branson
Fellow billionaire in the space race and owner of SpaceX, Elon Musk, visited Sir Branson on the morning of the flight to wish him well and even paid $10,000 deposit to be a passenger in the next available Virgin Galactic mission.
The other, Jeff Bezos, sent a goodwill message.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of Blue Origin, was the initial confidence-booster passenger on Blue Origin’s first space tourism flight on 20 July, 2021.
Bezos got a further boost when FAA on 12 July, 2021 granted his Blue Origin licence to take human beings in that mission which was its first crewed flight.
It has gone through 15 uncrewed test flights in five years from the company’s base in the Texas desert.
Its 15th and last successful uncrewed test flight to space was on 14 April, 2021 with a crash-test dummy named, Mannequin Skywalker.
Bezos’ younger brother, Mark; winner of an auction bid in June and Wally Funk, an aviation enthusiast, completed the list of four in early July, 2021 for that crewed space tour.
On 15 July, 2021 Blue Origin said the auction bid winner, who preferred anonymity, cannot make the trip due to “scheduling conflicts” and will be taking the next available flight.
That position for the July 20, 2021 flight was taken by Oliver Daemen, 18-year-old Physics student and son of Joes Daemen, the Dutch Chief Executive of Somerset Capital Partners,
Funk, now 82 years old, was one of the 13 members of the US “Mercury Women in Space Programme” of 1961.
The programme was cancelled after their completing the training and none of them ever flew to space.
As an aviator, Funk has logged more than 19,600 flying hours.
She says she has taught more than 3,000 people to fly and applied to join NASA’s astronaut programme three times after Mercury 13 and was not accepted.
Wally Funk has now become the oldest (woman and) person to travel to space while Oliver Daemen is the youngest.
HOW FIT ARE THE SPACE TOURISTS?
Bezos is 57 (born 12 January, 1964), Branson; 70 (born 18 July, 1950), but Musk is 50 years old (born 28 June, 1971).
In 1998, John Glenn, former astronaut in the US Mercury Shuttle programme, flew again on Shuttle Discovery’s STS-95 mission at age 77, making him the oldest person ever in space then.
He met the required conditions and his mission was designed to study effects of space, like loss of muscle mass and bone density, on persons as in ageing.
Although, there are no age restrictions for going to space now, normal American astronauts’ age is between 26 and 46, with the average age as 34 years.
The oldest Chinese in space is Nie Haisheng, 56 years old, an Air Force fighter pilot and two-time astronaut, who was the Mission Commander of Shenzhou-12 mission to China’s Tianhe Space Station.
That was his third time in space.
The Russian cosmonaut, Pavel Vinogradov, the oldest person to do a spacewalk on 19 April, 2013 which was in the ISS as Expedition 35, was 59 years old.
That was the third time in space in 16 years in both Mir and ISS for the veteran cosmonaut.
Persons over 40 years old are not usually picked as first-time astronauts.
Blue Origin’s spaceflight passengers received safety briefs, mission simulation and mission instructions two days before the launch.
Virgin Galactic says its passengers will be given three days training before launch.
Is NASA monitoring with the other licensing authorities to ensure that these aspiring space billionaires and space tourists meet the rigorous physical and psychological conditions close to those for professional astronauts?
Though their flights are sub-orbital, not orbital like for professional astronauts, should things go wrong, how many G forces can they withstand without passing out?
Another issue is insurance cover for such trips: can it come under aviation?
Insurance for professional astronauts is covered by their governments and does not fall under an aviation policy.
Virgin Galactic has an indemnity clause placing all risks on the intending passenger.
However, the excitement is great and real.
“To see the Earth from space, changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity,” said Bezos.
An online auction was opened in which just one intending passenger can win a seat for its first crewed space tour.
The Combo capsule can take six passengers but Blue Origin wanted to cap the first crewed flight at four passengers.
The highest bid was first $1.2 million and soon went up to $2.8 million.
As Jeff Bezos announced his intention to be on the first trip, the highest bid further jumped to $3.5 million and then $4.8 million by 10 June, 2021.
The Blue Origin auction closed on 12 June, 2021 with the highest bid of $28 million.
The money (less 6% auctioneer’s commission) will be donated to Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, an educational support club, to promote science and technology among young people.
About 52,000 persons from 159 countries participated in the auction.
OPPOSITION TO SPACE TOURISM
Two petitions opened just three days of Bezos making public his intention of travelling to space in his Instagram page.
One is “Petition To Not Allow Jeff Bezos Re-Entry To Earth” and the other is: “Do not allow Jeff Bezos to return to Earth.”
Both petitions have garnered over 100,000 signatories.
The net worth of American billionaires increased by $637 billion when 40 million Americans filed for unemployment during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bezos saw his net worth rise by $48.6 billion and Musk by $17.2 billion in the pandemic.
The World Food Programme says $6 billion is needed to save 41 million people in 43 countries from starvation in 2021.
The situation is currently critical in four countries: Ethiopia, Madagascar, South Sudan, and Yemen, with more than 600,000 people facing acute food shortage.
In US, 56 new billionaires emerged in the first 11 months of the pandemic with total US billionaire wealth at $4.6 trillion.
Again, who, but the super rich will go on space tourism.
Only five per cent of the world’s population have ever been on an airplane.
WHAT IS THE BOUNDARY OF SPACE?
NASA considers 50 miles to be the boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere and space.
Many other space experts take the so-called Kármán Line (after 19th century Hungarian-American engineer, Theodore von Kármán) of 62 miles as the boundary because the atmosphere gets too thin from there to provide lift to support normal aeroplane flight.
The atmosphere actually starts getting thin from 20 miles (32 kilometres) away.
Branson may have beaten Bezos to it in this race of billionaire cowboys, as someone referred to them, jokingly, by travelling first but some controversy is being raised on the maximum altitude of his craft which is 55 miles.
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, FAI, a non-profit organisation that certifies aeronautical and astronautical world records, adopts the Kármán line (62 miles) as the border of space.
Jeff Bezos announced his intention to travel to space on 7 June, 2021 on his company’s first tourism flight which the company said on 5 May, 2021 will take place on 20 July, 2021.
Branson earlier, said he will be travelling to space in Summer, 2021.
However, Virgin Galactic said it is starting its space tourism flights for paying passengers with four mission specialists from its facility in southern New Mexico on July 11, 2021.
Branson was to have come aboard that flight as a crew member ahead of Bezos’ 20 July, 2021 mission.
In a spaceflight, a crew member is either a pilot or a mission specialist.
Virgin was to assign him a role or update the licence with the FAA, which licenses commercial rocket launch, to include Branson as a passenger.
All that was no longer necessary as FAA has licensed Virgin Galactic to take passengers to space on 25 June, 2021.
The publicity that Sir Branson’s flight to space has attracted is seeing Virgin Galactic Holdings’ shares gain.
If it is all a publicity stunt, it is working.
About 600 people from 58 countries have reserved tickets of $250,000 per seat to be in the first set of space tourists and Virgin Galactic plans up to 400 missions a year.
The list includes superstars like Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Russell Brand, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher.
Kutcher said he paid a deposit of $200,000 in 2012 before he got married to actress, Mila Kunis, in 2015.
They both have two children now and Mila convinced him, “it was not a smart family decision to be heading into space when we have young children. So I ended up selling my ticket back to Virgin Galactic,” Kutcher said.
Mila now says she regrets her decision which was made because she was really afraid Ashton Kutcher might die.
Kutcher says he still plans to travel to space later.
RICHARD BRANSON LOVES ADVENTURE
In 1987, Branson and Per Lindstrand were the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a hot air balloon.
In 1991, both men were again the first to successfully cross the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon, covering a distance of 6,700 miles in two days.
Branson has tried four times to fly around the world, solo, in a hot air balloon and failed.
That record was set by Steve Fossett in a non-stop journey that took him two weeks and ended on 2 July, 2002.
Brian Jones and Bertrand Piccard, in a 20-day joint flight around the world, from Switzerland ending in Africa, were the first to travel round the world in hot air balloon.
Their record in March, 1999 is joint, not solo.
SPACE TOURISM GOING FROM SUB-ORBITAL TO ORBITAL FLIGHTS
The spaceflights by Branson and Bezos are sub-orbital.
Their spacecraft are not powerful enough to overcome the Earth’s escape velocity of 40,270 km/h (25,020 mph) and go into orbit.
The other billionaire in the race, Elon Musk, is the owner of SpaceX which has taken astronauts to the International Space Station, ISS, in a Dragon capsule with its Falcon rocket.
Musk commented “haha” on a Twitter meme on 17 July, 2021 showing Bezos talking to him about Blue Origin’s 20 July flight and poking fun at Jeff Bezos for not capable of going beyond the edge of space.
SpaceX Starship orbital tests for a rocket that will even go further than ISS will run from 20 July to 20 December, 2021.
Five prototypes of the 16-storey Starship have been tested: four exploded while one landed successfully.
A test of the 23-storey Super Heavy Starship, 400 feet (120 metres) tall with 28 Raptor engines that can produce 16 million pounds of thrust, is planned for July, 2021.
It is so powerful that Elon Musk says he is confident of its going uncrewed to Mars in 2024 and taking astronauts to the red planet in 2026.
It uses a mix of Methane and Oxygen as fuel, the first of such.
The Falcon rocket uses Kerosene as fuel and has been launched 124 times in 11 years.
It was successful 122 times (98%); failed once and scored a partial success once, delivering its secondary payload in a lower-than-planned orbit.
The Super Heavy Starship orbital test is being delayed because of concerns that its launch may affect or harm wildlife around the launch site in Boca Chica, South Texas.
Musk has expressed his desire to travel to space – Mars in particular.
The gate is now further open for space tourists and adventure seekers to earn an “Astronaut’s Wing” like Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and their co-space travelers.
Former NASA astronaut, now staff of Blue Origin, Jeff Ashby, decorates Jeff Bezos with astronauts wing (photo credit: Alan Boyle)
The astronaut wings are so far being awarded to persons in the two missions by Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin and not by the FAA which has more stringent conditions for awarding them.
Under FAA rules, a person needs to train for a minimum of three years to qualify.
You then become a flown astronaut and earn astronaut wings as crew member who contributes to flight safety in a licensed spacecraft that rises above 50 miles in altitude.
This rule is relaxed to include those with flown astronauts engaged in space exploration and science in space missions.
Wings may also be awarded on an honourary basis by FAA to persons who do not meet those specifications but whose contribution to commercial human spaceflight merits special recognition.
This clause may cover the space-pioneering billionaires but, it is difficult to see how space tourists qualify for astronauts wings and this is yet another point of controversy.
photo courtesy: cnn, bbc, azarbaycan24, virgin, blueorigin, techgadget, aljazeera, pigeonexpress
FAA PROBES, CLEARS VIRGIN GALACTIC TO RESUME SPACE FLIGHTS
The Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, has concluded investigation into Virgin Galactic’s “minor” flight trajectory deviation in its first fully crewed flight to space with the owner, Sir Richard Branson, on 11 July, 2021.
A red light flashed on the Unity Ship 22 console, an “entry glide-cone warning” for one minute, forty-one seconds, indicating it was out of the approved flight path for that period during re-entry.
The pilots adjusted it and said it may be due to sudden change in wind velocity and direction.
The FAA, US aviation regulatory agency, gave the mission a designated airspace, which is restricted, to avoid collision with airplanes and casualties on the ground in case of an accident.
Virgin Galactic says that no one was in danger as a result of this small change in trajectory.
FAA, on 30 September, 2021 cleared Virgin Galactic to resume space tourism flights and accepted its proposal to expand the protected airspace in the future.
In addition, should a need for a wider trajectory still occur in a flight, the pilots must communicate with air traffic controllers in real time.
The incident under investigation was not reported at the time it happened during flight.
Virgin Galactic’s plan to commence full space tourism flights early 2022 would have suffered a setback if the investigation failed to resolve the issue and lift the suspension order on its flights.
Tickets are already on sale for $450,000 a seat.
The full statement from Virgin Galactic on the incident reads:
As we have previously stated, we are working in partnership with the FAA to address the short time that the spaceship dropped below its permitted altitude during the Unity 22 flight. We take this seriously and are currently addressing the causes of the issue and determining how to prevent this from occurring on future missions. Although the flight’s ultimate trajectory deviated from our initial plan, it was a controlled and intentional flight path that allowed Unity 22 to successfully reach space and land safely at our Spaceport in New Mexico. At no time were passengers and crew put in any danger as a result of this change in trajectory, and at no time did the ship travel above any population centers or cause a hazard to the public. FAA representatives were present in our control room during the flight and in post-flight debriefs. We have been working closely with the FAA to support a thorough review and timely resolution of this issue.
The clearance is good news for space tourism when a group of current and former rival Blue Origin employees on 30 October, 2021 said they would not fly on the company’s rocket because they don’t think it is safe.
The 21 “whistle-blowers” say Blue Origin’s leadership has ignored employees’ safety concerns in their determination to push forward their space tourism plans.
The FAA says it will investigate that.
Very interesting article! Space exploration has come a long ways.
I can’t imagine paying that much money for a few minutes in space. How I would love to have that money to make a difference in people’s life in their little space.
Thank you, Mary Jane, for reading and dropping a comment.
Your point is in line with many others who oppose the billionaires’ space tourism race when there’re many humanitarian problems in the world.
Let’s hope we all, especially super rich people, give more to charity while still advancing space exploration.