Blue Origin, today December 11, successfully launched its first crew of six into space, including Michael Strahan and, in the launch process, has established six new space records.
From the tallest person to fly in space to the first parent-child pair to take off together, the six newly qualified astronauts made history aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. The crew included former soccer star-turned-TV host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to fly into space and the namesake of Blue Origin’s suborbital launch vehicle.
Michael Strahan said the experience was great. “I want to go back,” said Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos after returning to Earth. “Touchdown has a new meaning now !!!”
he wrote on Twitter after the flight.
“It was surreal… it was unbelievable, it’s hard to even describe it,” Strahan said in a Twitter video after the flight. “It will take a while to process, but it couldn’t have been better.”
Taking off at 10 am EST (1500 GMT) from Blue Origin’s One launch site here in Van Horn, Texas, the New Shepard single-stage rocket carried the crew on a 10-minute flight that hovered just above the internationally recognized boundary between Earth and space. Michael Strahan and Churchley, along with paying passengers Dylan Taylor, Evan Dick and Lane and Cameron Bess, experienced about three minutes of zero gravity as they looked down at our planet 65 miles (106 km).
The crew capsule, dubbed “RSS First Step,” then descended back to the ground, using three large parachutes and a last-second burst of air from the downward-facing thrusters to slow and cushion the landing. Jeff Bezos, the former Amazon CEO and founder of Blue Origin, was on hand to welcome the six to Earth and present their Blue Origin astronaut wings to each.
At 6 feet 5 inches tall (196cm), Strahan has set a new record for being the tallest person to fly in space. The Super Bowl champion who now hosts “Good Morning America” on ABC has surpassed the previous Guinness World Record in height by one inch, which until now was jointly held by NASA astronauts James “Ox” van Hoften and James Wetherbee.
Blue Origin paid Strahan a salary to fly as a crew member on the mission, which he in turn donated to the Boys & Girls Club. Strahan isn’t the first TV news character to fly into space – that distinction goes to Toyohiro Akiyama, who launched himself on the Russian Mir space station as a correspondent for the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) in 1990 – but Strahan is the first reporter to fly on suborbital spaceflight.
Strahan is now also the first black person to fly on a suborbital spaceflight among the now 38 people who have made the leap into space and back. (Sixteen black astronauts and cosmonauts flew higher and faster and Strahan on missions that entered Earth’s orbit.)
The first person to launch into a suborbital spaceflight was Alan Shepard, Churchley’s father, who took off 60 years ago on May 5, 1961. (Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle is named after Alan Shepard.) Churchley is now the second, second generation American astronaut and first daughter of a space traveler to leave the planet. Churchley flew as a guest of Blue Origin.
“I feel a bit like I’m following in my father’s footsteps,” Churchley said in a Blue Origin video.
After the launch, Strahan said Churchley exclaimed “Let’s light this candle!” in a nod to his father, who said the same words before embarking on his Freedom 7 Mercury mission.
Venture capitalist Lane Bess and his offspring Cameron became the first parent and child to fly into space together. Cameron, a content creator for Twitch and YouTube, is also the first pansexual person to leap off Earth.
“It is certainly an honor to be one of the first LGTBQ + people in space,” said Cameron Bess in the Blue Origin crew video.
Taylor, the president and CEO of space exploration company Voyager Space and founder of the nonprofit Space for Humanity, and Dick, an engineer and investor who volunteers as a pilot for Starfighters Aerospace, completed the New Shepard crew. 19 (NS-19).
Strahan flew to seat no. 1, making it the 604th person to fly above 50 miles (80 km), the US definition of where space begins. Churchley, Taylor, Lane Bess, Cameron Bess and Dick are now in the 605th to 609th person to fly, respectively.
The NS-19 mission marked the fifth flight each for the RSS First Step capsule and its reusable booster. It was the nineteenth successful flight for the New Shepard since 2015, the sixth flight of the year and the third launch with humans on board.
Blue Origin dedicated Saturday’s launch to former passenger Glen DeVries, who died in a plane crash on November 11, less than a month after launching into space on the company’s NS-18 passenger flight with actor William Shatner and two others. .
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