Blue Origin completes its 5th crew Launch

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On Saturday, Blue Origin completed its fifth crew launch. This comes after the delay in voyage last month because of the bad quality of a New Shepard rocket’s back-up system.

The Amazon CEO’s space tourism venture, Blue Origin, found success in its fourth flight after it landed without any hitches. The flight landed in March in Texas and took 6 passengers to the edge of space. The whole thing lasted only 10 minutes, but was a big success.

Phil Joyce, Senior Vice President for New Shepard, expressed his admiration for the flight, saying that it was an honor for him tk be a part of this. “Every mission gives us an opportunity to give a different group of six people the life-changing experience of witnessing first hand the beauty and fragility of our planet from space.”

The whole ride which takes the passengers to the suborbital level lasts a total of 10 minutes, reaching an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km). At this height, passengers can experience a few seconds of weightlessness before the descent back to Earth begins which involves a parachute landing.

It forms part of an ongoing effort by a handful of companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson-founded Virgin Galactic that are trying hard to make space travel a reality, and not just science fiction. At the moment, Axiom, SpaceX and NASA have boasted about such missions as a milestone in the expansion of privately funded space-based commerce, constituting what industry insiders call the “low-Earth orbit economy,” or “LEO economy” as an abbreviation. As the new space industry becomes more robust, these industries are looking at long term plans like setting up colonies on Mars. But before that, they must build up their LEO.

In the past, the International Space Station (ISS) has had a chance to host several wealthy tourists.

Analysts all over the world have lauded Saturday’s expedition as part of a series of ambitious rocket powered exploration. The specialty is that these are bankrolled by private investment capital and wealthy passengers instead of the taxpayer dollars which comes after six decades since the dawn of the space age.