6.04.2024
Blue Origin puts a test pilot who could have been NASA’s first Black astronaut on its next space crew
Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight missed out on space in the 1960s. (Courtesy of Ed Dwight via National Geographic
If the fates decided differently, Air Force test pilot Ed Dwight could have become NASA’s first Black astronaut in the 1960s — but he lost out, amid racial controversy. Now he’s in line to travel to space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.
Blue Origin listed the 90-year-old Dwight among six people who’ll be on its New Shepard suborbital rocket ship when it resumes crewed flights, on a date yet to be announced. Crewed flights were suspended after an uncrewed research mission went awry in 2022, but a repeat of that uncrewed mission went off without a hitch last December.
Dwight, who became a sculptor after resigning from the Air Force as a captain in 1966, will have his flight sponsored by Space for Humanity and by the Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation, which was created by the founders of Seattle-based Dream Variation Ventures.
Dwight’s life story is featured in a National Geographic documentary titled “The Space Race.” In 1961, he was chosen to enter an Air Force flight training program that was regarded as a pathway to NASA’s astronaut corps, and went on to win an Air Force recommendation to join NASA. But Dwight was passed over — and he later said that racism was to blame.
“My hope was just getting into space in any kind of way,” Dwight said in the documentary, “but they were not going to let that happen.”
It would be another two decades before Guion Bluford Jr. became the first Black American in space in 1983.
This isn’t the first time Blue Origin has put a would-be pioneer astronaut on its crew list. The quartet for the company’s first crewed flight in 2021 included Wally Funk, a member of the “Mercury 13” group of women fliers who missed out on joining NASA’s early astronaut corps.
Dwight could be in line to attain a different kind of distinction in space history: As of now, the oldest person to reach space, albeit on a suborbital trip, is William Shatner, the star of the first set of “Star Trek” TV shows and movies. His age was 90 years and 205 days at the time of his flight in October 2021. Dwight is currently 90 years and 208 days old. He could thus wrest away Shatner’s space title. (Blue Origin said “the flight date will be announced soon.”)
The other five people on the list for New Shepard’s next crewed flight are:
- Mason Angel, the founder of Industrious Ventures, a Denver-based venture capital fund supporting early-stage companies that enable or progress new industrial revolutions.
- Sylvain Chiron, the founder of Brasserie du Mont Blanc, one of the largest craft breweries in France.
- Kenneth L. Hess, a software engineer and entrepreneur who developed the Family Tree Maker product line in the 1990s. The genealogy tech company was acquired by Ancestry.com in 2003. In 2001, Hess founded Science Buddies, a K-12 nonprofit that’s based in California and focuses on STEM literacy.
- Carol Schaller, a retired CPA and adventure traveler who lives on a farm in Lumberville, Pa., with her husband of 40 years.
- Gopi Thotakura, co-founder of Preserve Life Corp., a global center for holistic wellness and applied health located near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. In addition to flying jets commercially, Thotakura pilots bush planes, aerobatic planes and seaplanes, as well as gliders and hot air balloons, and has served as an international medical jet pilot.
Blue Origin said each spaceflier will carry a postcard to space on behalf of the company’s Club for the Future. The nonprofit effort aims to get students involved in Blue Origin’s space program through educational activities, including an all-digital method to create and send postcards that are loaded onto a hard drive for New Shepard missions. After each mission, students are emailed instructions for accessing their cards. (The Club for the Future also accepts on-paper postcards.)
The next mission will mark the 25th New Shepard flight — a tally that takes in six previous crewed missions and 18 uncrewed missions since 2015. Thirty-one spacefliers have taken rides in New Shepard’s space capsule to heights beyond the 100-kilometer (62-mile) Karman Line that currently serves as the internationally accepted boundary for spaceflight. (U.S. agencies use a 50-mile standard instead.)
Blue Origin’s flight arrangements are made privately, and it hasn’t disclosed how much its spaceflight customers are paying. Just after the first crewed flight in 2021, Jeff Bezos said the Kent, Wash.-based company was “approaching $100 million in private sales already, and demand is very, very high.”
Bezos’ fiancée, Lauren Sanchez, has said that she intends to lead an all-female New Shepard crew on a suborbital flight that she hopes will take place this year. In an interview published by Vogue last December, Sanchez said the fliers would be remarkable people who are “paving the way for women,” but few other details about her plans have come to light.
Clarification for 4 p.m. PT April 4: In an earlier version of this report, I referred to Guion Bluford Jr. as NASA’s first Black astronaut. NASA considers Robert Lawrence (1935-1967) to be the first African-American astronaut, although he was never able to join the space agency’s astronaut corps.
Lawrence was selected by the Air Force to join the Manned Orbiting Laboratory program in 1967, but died in a plane crash later that year. NASA said “it is virtually certain” that Lawrence would have been transferred to NASA had he lived, and today he’s typically included in lists of U.S. astronauts.
Quelle: GeekWire
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Update: 16.05.2024
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Blue Origin targeting May 19 for 1st crewed spaceflight since 2022
The mission, known as NS-25, will be Blue Origin's first crewed launch since August 2022.
Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket lifts with the NS-21 crew from Launch Site One in West Texas on June 4, 2022. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin's human-spaceflight drought will end this weekend, if all goes according to plan.
Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company announced today (May 14) that it's targeting Sunday (May 19) for its latest suborbital space tourism effort. The mission, known as NS-25, will lift off from Blue Origin's West Texas site during a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local time in West Texas).
Blue Origin will livestream the launch. Coverage will begin at 8:50 a.m. EDT (1250 GMT).
The crew of Blue Origin's upcoming NS-25 suborbital mission. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Blue Origin's suborbital flights employ the company's New Shepard vehicle, which consists of a rocket and a capsule. Both of these elements are reusable; the rocket lands vertically not long after liftoff, while the crew-carrying capsule touches down under parachutes.
Passengers aboard the capsule experience a few minutes of weightlessness and get to see Earth against the blackness of space. It's a whirlwind affair; the entire flight, from launch to capsule touchdown, lasts about 11 minutes.
As its name suggests, NS-25 will be the 25th New Shepard liftoff to date. But it will be just the seventh crewed launch for the vehicle, which also conducts robotic research missions.
The most recent crewed Blue Origin flight, NS-22, took place in August 2022. A month later, New Shepard suffered an anomaly during a research mission, resulting in the destruction of the rocket; the capsule parachuted safely down to Earth.
Blue Origin grounded New Shepard while it investigated the anomaly — which it traced to a "thermo-structural failure" of the nozzle on the rocket's single BE-3PM engine — and devised a fix. The suborbital vehicle returned to flight in December 2023 with the uncrewed NS-24 mission.
Blue Origin announced the crew for the upcoming NS-25 mission last month. The six passengers are Ed Dwight, the U.S.'s first-ever black astronaut candidate; venture capitalist Mason Angel; Sylvain Chiron, the founder of French craft brewery Brasserie Mont Blanc; entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; and pilot and aviator Gopi Thotakura. You can read more about each of them here.
Another suborbital tourism mission will launch a few weeks after NS-25, if all goes according to plan. Blue Origin's main competitor in this space, Virgin Galactic, is targeting June 8 for its four-passenger Galactic 07 flight.
Quelle: SC
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Update: 18.05.2024
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Blue Origin to launch crewed New Shepard rocket
TEXAS — It has been nearly two years since the last crewed launch but this weekend, Blue Origin is planning to send six people to suborbital orbit via its New Shepard rocket from Texas.
Blue Origin will send its 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket beyond the Kármán line (the internationally established edge of space at 62 miles/100 kilometers) from Launch Site One in West Texas, stated the company.
The NS-25 mission’s launch window starts at 9:30 a.m. ET, Sunday, May 19.
Just like SpaceX rockets, the New Shepard is designed to land autonomously, and it will return to a landing pad.
The last time New Shepard launched people was in August 2022.
About the New Shepard spacecraft and rocket
The capsule can hold up to six people and is named the RSS First Step. The “RSS” stands for “reusable space ship.”
“It represents Blue Origin’s first step towards building the road to space for the benefit of Earth,” said Brett Griffin as he explained to Spectrum News the meaning behind the name.
Griffin’s company, Griffin Communications Group, handles public relations for Blue Origin as well as other companies.
The capsule itself has six windows for each of the passengers of this mission to look out of as they soar three times the speed of sound, explained Griffin.
The New Shepard’s rocket booster is quite capable, he stated.
“… New Shepard’s BE-3PM engine is fueled by a highly efficient and clean combination of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. During flight, the only byproduct of New Shepard’s engine combustion is water vapor with no carbon emissions,” he claimed.
After the crew enjoy a couple of minutes of microgravity fun, they must return home as it returns to Earth’s atmosphere. First Step’s three parachutes will deploy at around 7,000 feet/21,000 meters as it will come in for a planned soft landing.
The stacked reusable vehicle does more than just send guests and paying customers to the edge of space to float around and see the curve of the globe Earth.
“Additionally, all the learnings from the New Shepard program are applied to New Glenn, Blue Origin’s orbital launch vehicle, and the Blue Moon lunar lander. Both of these future vehicles leverage New Shepard’s autonomy, guidance, vertical landing architecture, powerful and throttleable liquid engines, and lean operations,” according to Griffin in an email.
Meet the crew
The New Shepard, named after the first American to go to space Alan Shepard, will send six crew members on an 11-minute suborbital journey. All are paying customers.
They are:
Ed Dwight: Before he became known for his sculptures of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman and other notable Black figures, President John F. Kennedy picked Dwight in 1961 to enter training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School, which was a pathway to NASA’s Astronaut Corps. While he completed his training two years later, he was not selected for the corps. Griffin stated that Space for Humanity and Jaison and Jamie Robinson Foundation sponsored Dwight’s seat.
Mason Angel: He is the founder of Industrious Ventures, a venture capital fund. It supports new companies.
Sylvain Chiron: He is the founder of one of France’s largest craft breweries called the Brasserie Mont Blanc.
Kenneth L. Hess: He is both a software engineer and entrepreneur who developed Family Tree Maker, which was bought by Ancestry.com in 2003.
Carol Schaller: A retired CPA, in 2017, “her doctor told her she would likely go blind. She has since traveled to 25 countries around the world, visited Mount Everest Base Camp” among other places, stated Blue Origin.
Gopi Thotakura: He is no stranger to the skies as he is both a pilot and aviator. In fact, he learned to fly before he could drive and is the co-founder of Preserve Life Corp.
Discover more about these six here.
Before this mission, the New Shepard has launched 31 people. All those who have flown must take a two-day astronaut training program that teaches them what they need to know about safe spaceflight.
“The crew learn about New Shepard’s mission profile, safety systems, zero-g protocols, and execute mission simulations,” Griffin stated.
Quelle: SPECTRUM NEWS 13
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Update: 19.05.2024
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AIAA Statement on Blue Origin’s Successful NS-25 Mission
NS-25 astronauts during training at Launch Site One. (May 18, 2024) | Credit: Blue Origin–©
May 19, 2024 – Reston, Va – AIAA CEO Dan Dumbacher made the following statement:
“On behalf of the 30,000 professional and student members of AIAA, we congratulate AIAA Corporate Member Blue Origin on its successful NS-25 mission. We congratulate Mason, Sylvain, Ed, Ken, Carol, and Gopi on their inspirational mission. We share the excitement around the NS-25 mission that embodies the promises of space for the benefit of Earth.
We are especially thrilled to celebrate Ed Dwight’s flight. After being selected as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate in the 1960s, Ed was not granted the opportunity to fly to space – until now. We hope Ed’s flight inspires future generations to pursue their dreams and persevere. We celebrate this spirit in the new Space4All campaign aiming to inspire, prepare, and employ a diverse space workforce. Space4All is the national space STEM awareness campaign being led by a public-private partnership including AIAA and Blue Origin, and more than 150 corporate, federal, non-profit, and community-based organizations including the National Space Council and the U.S. Department of Education.”
Quelle: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
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Blue Origin Completes 25th Mission to Space with Six Crew Onboard
Today, Blue Origin successfully completed its seventh human spaceflight and the 25th flight for the New Shepard program. Our astronaut crew included: Mason Angel, Sylvain Chiron, Kenneth L. Hess, Carol Schaller, Gopi Thotakura, and former Air Force Captain Ed Dwight, who was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate but never had the opportunity to fly.
New Shepard has now flown 37 people into space, including today’s crew.
The NS-25 Crew. Pictured from left to right: Gopi Thotakura, Mason Angel, Carol Schaller, Ed Dwight, Ken Hess, and Sylvain Chiron.
“A big thank you to our astronaut customers for the opportunity to provide this life-changing experience,” said Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President, New Shepard. “Each of you are pioneers helping to advance our mission to build a road to space for the benefit of Earth.”
If you’re interested in flying on New Shepard as an astronaut or flying a payload on a future mission, visit BlueOrigin.com. You can also purchase commemorative merchandise from today’s mission at the Blue Origin Shop.
In case you missed it, view a full replay of today’s flight below.
Quelle: Blue Origin