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Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.
"I was the first guy in the world to be famous for not doing something," Dwight joked ahead of launch."Needless to say, I'm overwhelmed."
To date, Blue Origin has flown 31 people aboard New Shepard—a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
Second nonagenarian
The program encountered a setback when a New Shepard rocket caught fire shortly after launch on September 12, 2022. The uncrewed capsule ejected in time, meaning astronauts would have been safe had they flown.
A federal investigation revealed an overheating engine nozzle was at fault. Blue Origin took corrective steps and carried out a successful uncrewed launch in December 2023, paving the way for Sunday's mission.
After lift-off, the sleek and roomy capsule separates from the booster, which produces zero carbon emissions. The rocket performs a precision vertical landing.
As the spaceship soars beyond the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level, passengers can marvel at the Earth's curvature and unbuckle their seats to float—or even perform jumping jacks—during a few minutes of weightlessness.
The capsule then reenters the atmosphere, deploying its parachutes for a gentle desert landing in a puff of sand.
Bezos himself was on the program's first ever crewed flight in 2021. A few months later, Shatner blurred the lines between science fiction and reality when he became the world's oldest ever astronaut, decades after he first played a space traveler.
Dwight will become only the second nonagenarian to venture beyond Earth.
Ticket prices are a well-guarded secret, but guests like Dwight ride for free.
To space, finally
Blue Origin's competitor in suborbital space is Virgin Galactic, which deploys a supersonic spaceplane that is dropped from beneath the wings of a massive carrier plane at high altitude.
Virgin Galactic experienced its own two-year safety pause because of an anomaly linked with the 2021 flight that carried its founder British tycoon Richard Branson into space. But the company later hit its stride with half a dozen successful flights in quick succession.
Its next mission is set for June, after which it will head into another pause to build out a new class of advanced spaceplane.
Sunday's mission finally gives Dwight the chance he was denied decades ago.
He was an elite test pilot when he was appointed by president John F Kennedy to join a highly competitive Air Force program known as a pathway for the astronaut corps, but was ultimately not picked.
He left the military in 1966, citing the strain of racial politics, before dedicating his life to telling Black history through sculpture. His art, displayed around the country, includes iconic figures like Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and more.
© 2024 AFP