After years in development, Jeff Bezos’ private space company Blue Origin aims to carry its first passengers on a ride to the edge of space in a few months.
Blue Origin on Thursday completed the fourteenth test flight of its New Shepard rocket booster and capsule, called NS-14. NS-14 marks one of the last remaining steps before Blue Origin flies its first crew to space.
The New Shepard schedule is ambitious, with the goal of flying every six weeks. New Shepard is designed to carry people on rides past the edge of space, reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet. The capsule spends several minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth, with massive windows to give passengers a view. Both the rockets and the capsules are reusable, with the boosters returning to land vertically and the capsules landing on control of a set of parachutes.
