Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will take a 11 minute trip on his own rocket to outer space. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson hurtled into space aboard his own winged rocket ship on Sunday, on July 11. However, Bezos is quick to admit that he is not in a contest to reach outer space.
Bezos spelt out his strategy on his maiden outer space trip: “Just sit back, relax, look out of the window, just absorb the view outside,” he said on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Blue Origin, the company founded by Bezos, is all set for a space mission on Tuesday. The passengers include Bezos, his brother, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer and a teenage tourist.
Blue Origin will fly Apollo-style, using capsules atop rockets, instead of an air-launched, reusable space plane.
"We have been training. This vehicle is ready. This crew is ready. This team is amazing. We just feel really good about it," Bezos old the "CBS This Morning" program on Monday.
New Shepard is a 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters) and fully autonomous reusable rocket-and-capsule combo named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American to go to space. The New Shepard launch is set for around 8am CDT (1300 GMT) from Blue Origin's Launch Site One facility some 32km outside Van Horn, a rural town in Texas.
Bezos’ Blue Origin company intends to send tourists past the so-called Karman line 100 km above Earth, which is is recognized by international aviation and aerospace federations as the threshold of space.
Branson became the first person to blast off in his own spaceship, beating Bezos, the richest person on the planet, by nine days. He also became only the second septuagenarian to go into space. Astronaut John Glenn flew on the shuttle at age 77 in 1998.
(With PTI inputs)