BLUE ORIGIN ROCKET MOVES CLOSER TO FLYING HUMANS WITH LATEST LAUNCH

 The Washington Post 15 April 2021 - by Dalvin Brown

© AP/AP In this image from video made available by Blue Origin, the New Shepard rocket lifts off during a test in West Texas on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. (Blue Origin via AP)

The promise of private space travel may be edging closer to reality.

Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, executed what it called an “astronaut rehearsal” Wednesday of its suborbital New Shepard rocket, launching the craft to the edge of space after having employees board as if they were going to travel with it, then disembarking before liftoff.

It was the second time this year that the rocket had launched successfully as Blue Origin prepares for what it hopes one day will be missions carrying paying passengers. The demonstration took place at Blue Origin’s launch site in West Texas. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

“As part of today’s rehearsals, our stand-in astronauts went through the exact same movements as future customers will experience on launch day,” the company said. The company live-streamed the event, including images of the capsule’s soft landing in a cloud of dust.

Before the launch, the “stand-in astronauts” climbed the launch tower, stepped into the crew chamber, buckled their harnesses and performed a communications check with the command center. They briefly closed the hatch, before exiting the crew quarters atop the 60-foot-tall rocket.

Instead of having actual people on board during the mission, Blue Origin sent up a test dummy named “Mannequin Skywalker.”

New Shepard took flight shortly before 1 p.m. Eastern time, shooting more than 60 miles into the air toward the Karman line, which is widely recognized as the point where space begins. The boosters then separated from the crew capsule and glided back to a soft vertical landing on Earth.

NASA again postpones historic Ingenuity helicopter flight on Mars© AP/AP In this image from video made available by Blue Origin, the New Shepard capsule uses parachutes to land during a test in West Texas on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. (Blue Origin via AP)

Detached from the engine system, the crew capsule hovered in microgravity before parachuting to the ground a few minutes later. Total trip time: just over 10 minutes.

Blue Origin’s stand-in astronauts were then driven to the crew chambers to rehearse recovery procedures such as hatch opening and exiting the capsule.

The practice run dubbed “NS-15” was the company’s 15th test flight since 2015. The company promises the vehicle will carry passengers to space “soon.”

New Shepard is designed to carry six passengers and has large windows to allow the people aboard to see out. The vehicle is named for Alan Shepard, the first American to fly in space in 1961.

After decades as a government monopoly, human space flight may soon become a private venture too. SpaceX is planning to carry the first all-civilian crew to space, perhaps before the end of this year. Virgin Galactic, founded by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, also is working to conduct suborbital flights to the edge of space.

“There will be many players in this human endeavour to go to space to benefit Earth,” Blue Origin says on its website. “We will go about this step by step because it is an illusion that skipping steps gets us there faster. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”