- On July 20th, Blue Origin’s New Shepard conducted a successful flight to space
- Since stepping down at Amazon, Jeff Bezos has been able to focus more time on commercial space flight
On July 20th 2021, founder of Amazon and billionaire Jeff Bezos and his company Blue Origin made a 10 minute, 10 second trip to space on the New Shepard, a brand new space aircraft. The trip adds to the dream of space tourism, showing that large strides are being made in the pursuit. Along with him were his brother Mark, Wally Funk (who has been a pioneer in the space race pursuit but never got to go into space) and Oliver Daemen (an 18 year old student). This flight marked the oldest and youngest people to ever be sent to space, Funk being 82 and Daemen being 18.
One of the main concerns/critiques of this expedition is the impact it had on the environment; it requires a tremendous amount for an aircraft to reach the space barrier. However, in response to this, Bezos believes that the industries that are heavy polluters should be and can be moved to space, keeping the waste off of Earth. Of course, this will take decades to finalize, but stepping stones are what will make this a reality.
