Jeff Bezos flew into space. Nine days later than Richard Branson - but 20 kilometers higher. The main thing about this flight

The New Shepard ship Blue Origin made the first suborbital flight in its history with passengers on board. The launch vehicle launched from the site in Texas near the Ranch Bezos at 16:12 Moscow time. Three minutes later, the capsule with the crew separated from the launch vehicle: the rocket landed on a special platform, and the ship continued to move along the ballistic trajectory. He crossed the line of his pocket , after which a few minutes later he began to decline and landed a few kilometers from the start point using three parachutes.

The launch took place ten minutes later than the initially planned time, but otherwise everything went regularly. During the flight, the ship with astronauts accelerated to a maximum speed of 3,595 kilometers per hour and rose to a height of 107 kilometers above the ground. The entire flight from the moment of start to landing was 10 minutes 10 seconds.

There were four people in the capsule. This is the founder of Blue Origin, the richest man of the world Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, 82-year-old pilots Wolly Frank and 18-year-old Oliver Daimen. Funk, who became the most elderly person who visited space, was invited by Bezos as an honorary guest-back in the early 1960s, she was in a detachment of training of the first female astronauts, but did not fly into space. Dalimen is the first Blue Origin commercial client, his finance father bought a ticket to him. At the same time, Dalimen was supposed to go into the second flight of New Shepard-but in the end he replaced the passenger in the first crew, who could not participate in launch due to employment. How much Davisen's father paid for a ticket is not officially specified.

Nine days before Bezos, another billionaire, Richard Branson, flew to the cosmos border. Branson Virgin Galactic is the main competitor to Blue Origin in the field of suborbital flights. Branson flew on the VSS Unity missile system developed by him, in which there were two pilots and three more passengers. The rocket plane rose to a height of 86 kilometers, that is, above the mark of 80 kilometers (50 miles), which is officially considered the border of the NASA and US Air Force. The international recognized boundary of the cosmos, however, is at an altitude of 100 kilometers - therefore, Blue Origin insists that this flight was not cosmic.

After the Bezos flight, the Virgin Galactic promotion at the opening on the New York Exchange fell by 7%. Branson himself congratulated the competitor on a successful flight and called the launch “impressive”.

Blue Origin plans to take two more flights with passengers in 2021. Presumably, they can take place in September or in October, Bezos said at a press conference after the flight. The number of passengers (the capsule is designed for a capacity of up to six people) in these flights, as well as their names are not yet disclosed. As Bezos said, the company has already received orders for private flights in the amount of $ 100 million.

Grigory Levchenko