Congratulations to Jeff Bezos and the intrepid crew on the first human crew flying aboard the New Shepard rocket for a successful mission above the line and back safely to the Earth!
The line in question is one every Hungarian should be proud of because it’s *OUR* line denoting the internationally recognised altitude where a craft is considered to have entered space. This is important for regulatory and jurisdictional purposes as aircraft and spacecraft operate under separate rules by law and treaty.
The Kármán line is named for Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American astrophysicist and is pegged at 100km (54 nautical miles, 62 miles, 330,000 feet) and is considered the point where a vehicle’s lift is entirely provided by inertia rather than air.
Passing the Kármán line isn’t necessarily required to be considered an astronaut. NASA and the US Armed Forces recognises 80 km (50 miles) altitude to be added to the ranks of astronauts which is why Virgin Galactic’s flight last week also created some new astronauts.
But getting civilians across the line and safely back to the ground is one heck of an achievement no matter how you cut it and having several robust competitors in the space tourism sector can only be good for the consumer as efficiencies ultimately bring down the cost of flying to space.
Blue Origin’s capsule ride does have some notable differences from Virgin Galactic’s…it is an autonomous vehicle that does not require pilots, it does not require a mother ship to take the capsule to altitude for launch, and apogee is 20+ km higher with New Shepard.
That being said…if I were offered a seat on either of them, I’d ride every day of the week and twice on Sunday to have that experience that all astronauts have when they see our fragile spaceship Earth from above the line. That thin blue line of our atmosphere protecting seven billion of us from the harsh environment of space.
This crew was certainly special with Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark making the trip as you’d expect with Jeff having founded the company. Joining them were 18 year-old Oliver Daemon (a paying passenger from the Netherlands) and 82 year-old Wally Funk who was a member of the Mercury 13 group of female astronaut trainees that were never allowed to go to space because their programme was canceled and is officially the oldest person to go to space.
Their ride to the line and back may well have been brief at just under 11 minutes but what they saw and experienced in zero-G at apogee likely has changed them for life.
What an amazingly beautiful and inspirational experience that must be! 🙂
Later this year, SpaceX is expected to join the tourism party by sending an all-civilian crew to the International Space Station on the Crew Dragon where they will spend several days aboard that outpost.
It’s a golden age for space nerds! 🙂