Blue Origin plans to launch an upgraded New Shepard spacecraft today, along with a test dummy called the Mannequin Skywalker. You can watch the action live here.
New Shepard Mission NS-14 is scheduled to launch at 11:57 ET (10:57 CT, which is local time) from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in west Texas. The live forecast is expected to start about 30 minutes before departure. You can watch it live below or at the Blue Origin website.
This will be the 14th launch of the New Shepard program, which is now in its seventh year of unmanned flight testing. Eventually, the reusable lanceor vehicle will take space tourists, about six per flight, to the Kármán line – the internationally recognized space boundary.
Peek through the large windows of the capsule, future passengers have a beautiful view of about 11 minutes on our blue planet at an altitude of 100 km. The New Shepard spacecraft will enter suborbital space, and without entering the earth, you must return to the surface shortly after launch. The booster will land vertically, while the capsule uses parachutes to make the slow descent.
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Before this happens, however, Blue Origin must certify the capsule as suitable for humans. The company is very close to it, and today’s launch is an important step.
Mannequin Skywalker (a play about Anakin Skywalker by Star Wars) traveled to suborbital space previously, but the test dummy should notice some new improvements.
The crew capsule has been adapted to enhance the passenger experience, including improved acoustics and in-vehicle temperature control, new crew display panels, speakers with a microphone and a push-to-talk button on each seat, according to to Blue Origin, owned and run by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people on earth. The capsule also has six seats, one of which is occupied by Mannequin Skywalker.
An important purpose of the New Shepard Mission NS-14 is to test communications and safety alert systems. A successful test today could set the scene for an actual crew flight, which is only expected in 2022. Blue Origin originally hoped to launch humans into space in 2019.
The price of a ticket to the suborbital space is not yet known, with estimates ranging from $ 50,000 to $ 250,000 per seat. Swell, these ventures into space will not be immediately accessible to those of us in the 99%.