The day has arrived. Blue Origin will send Jeff Bezos, creator of Amazon and the aerospace company, into space this Tuesday, July 20, along with his brother Mark; Wally Funk, the 82-year-old Mercury 13 pilot, and Oliver Daemen, the youngest person to go into space, replacing a billionaire who paid $ 28 million at auction for this flight. Although Richard Branson got ahead a few days ago and is now the first billionaire to have traveled into space with Virgin Galactic; it’s the turn of the Bezos company. The four of them are about to embark on their first voyage and will go down in history as the first Blue Origin space tourists to do so. But, What will this flight be like?
The Bezos brothers, Funk and Daemen already have completed their training as astronauts and they will depart this Tuesday on their first trip to space around 8:00 CT; that is, at the same time in Mexico City and at 3 p.m. Spanish peninsular time, as explained in Science Alert. The group will enter a Blue Origin New Shepard that will raise them around 100 kilometers above sea level; there they will spend a few minutes observing the earth curvature feeling in their own flesh the zero gravity. After this, the capsule and the rocket will fall towards different places on Earth.
For a person to be able to say that he has been in space and, therefore, that he is a space tourist, a series of criteria must be followed. The most important is that you have to pass the Kármán line. This is an imaginary line that we ourselves have drawn 100 kilometers above sea level; since that is the point we consider the line between the atmosphere and outer space. As you can see, these four Blue Origin space tourists will probably go over this line a bit and, although they can be considered space tourists, they are actually going to be very much on the edge of space.
These types of trips are known as suborbital flights, because they do not go all the way around the earth’s surface; but they do reach 100km in height. Although the good thing is that in just ten minutes they will be able to experience what is a launch, zero gravity and descent. And many people would like to be in their place even if they are just going to look a little into space.
Space tourism: the difference between Blue Origin and SpaceX flights
Private companies dominate space flights. Some, like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, are specializing in suborbital flights. While others specialize in trips related to NASA or space exploration, such as SpaceX, Elon Musk, or Boeing, which will soon resume its tests.
Suborbital flights are already known to us and they are very interesting for space tourism, that is, for people who want to travel to space and can pay for it to do so. We don’t have a price tag yet, but many people hope that, although it is high at the beginning, it may go down over time. Will anyone be able to go to space in the future? We don’t know yet; but for the moment it seems that anyone who pays for it can do it.
Inspiration4, SpaceX’s mission
On the other hand, flights like Inspiration4, which they are preparing from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and will be the first with a completely civilian crew, are quite different. In this case the idea is not only to go beyond the Kármán line but also to that the trip can last around five days. They will spend that time in the aerospace company’s Crew Dragon capsule and will orbit the Earth every 90 minutes on a “custom flight path,” as SpaceX reported when announcing the mission.
For all this, the four people who will make this trip they will need more extensive preparation than if they were just space tourists. That is, they themselves will be the crew for the duration of the trip and will be in charge of solving any problems that may arise.
The idea of Musk and his company is that flights of this type and space tourism become more accessible every day. The same thing happens with Blue Origin by Bezos or Virgin Galactic by Branson. But as we have already talked about a moment ago: for now it is not like that. For now, the space is open only to billionaires or characters like Bezos.Although most people who do not have checking accounts with large amounts of money and who ambition to go to space are already looking forward to their time to buy tickets. Who wouldn’t want to feel zero gravity in their own body or observe the Earth from up there? At the moment, more people than can afford it.