Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin Launches and Lands Its Rocket Mannequin Skywalker was the lucky passenger experiencing zero gravity at 351,000 feet.
This story originally appeared on PCMag
Jeff Bezos has big plans for space, and the latest successful launch of Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital booster and crew capsule suggest he's going to achieve them.
As Mashable reports, on Sunday, New Shepard Mission 8 was launched in Texas and managed to achieve a maximum altitude of 351,000 feet before the rocket landed and the crew capsule floated back down to Earth using parachutes. Liftoff to touchdown took around 10 minutes.
Highlights from today's mission. Don't miss the Nerf ball doing a few backflips in zero gravity. #GradatimFerociter @BlueOrigin pic.twitter.com/YxlJRt0MXc
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 30, 2018
New Shepard is a suborbital spaceflight system consisting of a rocket booster and crew capsule with room for at least three people. It's a fully-automated system, capable of landing both the rocket and the crew capsule for reuse. For Mission 8, Mannequin Skywalker was aboard the crew capsule and covered in sensors to grab some valuable data regarding what a person would experience during the launch, flight and landing.
The success of this latest test flight is exciting for anyone who'd like to be blasted off the ground attached to a rocket in order to experience zero gravity while looking back down at the Earth. Bezos intends to offer just that experience to customers in the future. No doubt you'll have to be a Prime subscriber to get on board, though.
