Tag: suborbital spaceflight
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Blue Origin’s space shots give tiny Texas town a boost that’s bigger than expected
A mural painted on a vacant building in Van Horn, Texas, features Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark, who are due to ride Blue Origin’s suborbital spaceship on Tuesday. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) VAN HORN, Texas — When I last visited this West Texas town in 2006, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture was…
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After Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin sees a ‘robust pipeline’ of future paying spacefliers
Suborbital space crewmates Oliver Daemen, Wally Funk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Bezos face the camera in front of a Blue Origin New Shepard booster. (Jeff Bezos via Instagram) Jeff Bezos and his crewmates are still finishing up their training for the first-ever crewed spaceflight conducted by Blue Origin, scheduled for Tuesday, but Bezos’ space venture…
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Blue Origin’s mystery passenger revealed: At age 18, Oliver Daemen will be youngest spaceflier
Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship lifts off for a 2019 test flight. (Blue Origin via YouTube) Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says the beneficiary of the $28 million auction for a spot on its New Shepard suborbital spaceship is Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands. Daemen is due to take a…
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Blue Origin shares multimillion-dollar spaceship ticket proceeds with 19 charities
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, checks out some of the postcards submitted for spaceflight as part of his nonprofit Club for the Future campaign. (Jeff Bezos via Twitter / 2019) There are only so many postcards you can send to space and back, even if you have $28 million to work…
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A tale of two spaceships: How Seattle tech titans helped launch suborbital space tours
Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity and its mothership (left) are modeled after the SpaceShipOne launch system (right) that was built with Seattle billionaire Paul Allen’s backing. (Photos by Virgin Galactic and Michael Pereckas) The suborbital spaceships built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spaceline may look totally different, but financially…
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Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson takes suborbital space trip, stealing the spotlight from Jeff Bezos
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, VSS Unity, fires up its hybrid rocket motor to head spaceward. (Virgin Galactic via YouTube) Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson rode his company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane into the skies over New Mexico today and did something that no billionaire has done before. In the company of five crewmates, Branson became…
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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin fuels feud with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic over suborbital space trips
How serious could the suborbital space race between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos get? (GeekWire Photos) Jeff Bezos has a longstanding rivalry with SpaceX’s Elon Musk, but now his Blue Origin space venture is upping the ante in its spat with fellow soon-to-be space traveler Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic — and the Twitterverse is not…
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Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture approaches period of maximum dynamic pressure
Jeff Bezos unveils a mockup of Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander in 2019. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) Jeff Bezos may be easing back from his CEO role at Amazon, but now he’s due to feel the heat at Blue Origin, the privately held space venture he created in the year 2000. The next…
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‘Mercury 13’ woman aviator Wally Funk will ride with Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin suborbital space trip
Female aviation pioneer Wally Funk goes wide-eyed when discussing spaceflight with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Instagram Video / Jeff Bezos) Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture has rounded out the foursome for its first crewed suborbital spaceflight with a pioneering woman aviator: Wally Funk, one of the “Mercury 13” women who went through…
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Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson plans July spaceflight to upstage Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin trip
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson says he’ll be Astronaut 001 on the July flight. (Virgin Galactic Photo) The billionaire space race is on: Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson is on the crew for the next test flight of the company’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane, which is scheduled to cross the 50-mile space frontier as early as…