Blue Origin flies thrill seekers to space, including oldest astronaut

WASHINGTON, D.C. — After a nearly two-year hiatus, Blue Origin flew adventurers to space on Sunday, including a former Air Force pilot who was denied the chance to be the United States' first Black astronaut decades ago.

It was the first crewed launch for the enterprise owned and founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos since a rocket mishap in 2022 left rival Virgin Galactic as the sole operator in the fledgling suborbital tourism market.

Six people including the sculptor Ed Dwight, who was on track to become NASA's first astronaut of color in the 1960s before being controversially spurned, launched around 09:36 a.m. local time (1436 GMT) from the Launch Site One base in west Texas, a live feed showed.

Dwight — at 90 years, 8 months and 10 days — became the oldest person to ever go to space.

«This is a life-changing experience, everybody needs to do this,» he exclaimed after the flight.

«I thought I didn't really need this in my life,» he added, reflecting on his omission from the astronaut corps, which was his first experience with failure as a young man.

«But I lied,» he added, with a hearty laugh.

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«You take everything you imagined, you multiply it roughly by 100 and you are still quite far from reality,» crewmate and French entrepreneur Sylvain Chiron told AFP.

«I'm not quite back down to Earth yet.»

Mission NS-25 is the seventh human flight for Blue Origin, which sees short jaunts on the New Shepard suborbital vehicle as a stepping stone to greater ambitions, including the development of a full-fledged heavy rocket and lunar lander.

Including Sunday's crew, the company has flown 37 people aboard New Shepard — a small, fully reusable rocket system named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

Advertisement This screen grab taken from a Blue Origin broadcast shows the Mission NS-25, with the New Shepard 4 rocket and crew capsule, taking off from the Blue Origin base near Van Horn, Texas, on May 19, 2024. AFP PHOTO / BLUE ORIGIN This screen grab taken from a Blue Origin broadcast shows Ed Dwight celebrating as he exits the Mission NS-25 crew capsule, upon landing near the Blue Origin base near Van Horn, Texas, on May 19, 2024. AFP PHOTO /