There seems to be a lot of excitement in the space travel arena this July. Not as much as Space X “Crew Dragon” making a dry run and then with passenger payload to the International Space Station a few months ago. Elon Musk has been setting a blistering pace of activity around Space-X’s product development to reach orbital performance with the current focus of building rockets to reach the moon in 2023 and Mars this decade.
This week of course is the two edge-of-space people catching up with their initiatives. First, to fire the salvo was Jeff Bezos who stood down as CEO of Amazon today after 27 years at the helm. His brother Mark, Wally Funk, and a mystery guest who bought a seat for a $28 million donation expected to make the 100 km sub-orbital 10-minute trip on July 20 on a Blue Origin space ship.
Richard Branson and his Virgin Galatic have jumped that threshold by setting an even more ambitious July 11 date to make their sub-orbital 90 km 9-minute flight hopefully beating Bezos to the punch.
The highest I have been yet being 41,000 feet (about 12.8 km high) in a Boeing 787. And yes, the latest iteration of Boeing (the 787) and Airbus (350’s) fly much higher in the sky having clear pathways over the older generations of aircraft.
I find it intriguing that people like Bezos and Branson are willing to take on these high-risk endeavors and put their lives on the line for a few minutes of fame. There is a high possibility of things going wrong in the nascent phase of the development of these products. It is certainly going to be an interesting watch on their progression.
And next year or two, we should also see activity around NASA’s ISS spaceship (with some Boeing support) that wants to put a man and woman on the moon this decade.
These are exciting times on the space front to see the science of space travel evolving.
References:
Guess Who’s Going to Space With Jeff Bezos? Wally Funk has been ready to become an astronaut for six decades. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/jeff-bezos-wally-funk-blue-origin/619344/
Sir Richard Branson sets 11 July to make spaceflight - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57689855