New Shepard in 3 minutes
Space travel realized?
New Shepherd is a manned suborbital launch vehicle for space tour developed by Blue Origin.
Unlike other launch vehicle that delivers satellites into orbit, her mission is to take the space traveler to an altitude of around 100km and return to the earth.
Blue Origin is the US space development company founded in 2000 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Approximately 2,000 employees working.
New Shepherd weighs around 54t, and using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen for BE-3 engine. Its thrust can be adjusted to 490kN at launch and 89kN at landing.
Her name New Shepherd is named after Alan Shepard, the first astronaut in the US.
Blue Origin Space Tour Package
A space tour by New Shepard contains that the engine will be injected for 2 minutes 30 seconds after launch, rise to around 100 km altitude, and experience zero gravity for about 5 minutes.
After launching, the capsule on which space traveler boards is separated from the booster, and its lands vertically. Later, the capsule descends with a parachute. Both capsule and booster can be reused.
Reference：Blue Origin website「New Shepard Mission Profile」
Travel time is around 10~15 minutes and price is approximately $200000.
Blue Origin doing test flight. In fact, the 12th test flight was successfully completed on December 12, 2019.
Other company’s package
It is not only Blue Origin that provides space tour services.
Club Tourism Space Tours has partnered with US space tour company Virgin Galactic to launch space tour service. We can experience 4 minutes of zero gravity on the winged spaceship Spaceship2 in this service.
Reference：Club Tourism Space Tour website
This service price will approximately $250000 per person.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast
According to the article, after two or more flight tests, it is scheduled to manned flight by the end of the year, but it is likely that it will be delayed by 2020.
Jeff Bezos' space development is sometimes spoken in contrast to Elon Musk, SpaceX founder.
Blue Origin has been developing slowly and steadily, while SpaceX has been developing at an overwhelming speed.
Jeff Bezos has been steadily developing with "Slow and Smooth, Slow and Fast," and Blue Origin has also developed the orbital launch vehicle "New Glen."
On October 22, 2019, it was announced that Blue Origin would partner with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and the Draper Institute for the design and development of the Blue Moon Lunar Module for the Artemis program.
As space development accelerates around the world, let's focus not only on big launch vehicle, but this also on space tour one and lunar landers.
Comic "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast"
The comic above is created by @_Pkrin, who belongs to the online salon "Anman Salon" managed by @wakanjyu321, Japanese genius / beautiful manga artist. Grateful thanks!
Click here for "Anman Salon" which can deal with the mission of space law and rocket girls project.
If we go on a space tour, what will we bring (whether or not we can bring it to the aircraft)?
Camera for capture the scenery, balls for playing with microgravity, food and drink, etc. are likely to be considered.
What about souvenirs?
We won't be able to go outside unless we land on some celestial body, so we'll have to buy it at the Spaceport shop.
We will need to prepare for the inspection, so we will stay a hotel near Spaceport a few days ago. The day before launch seems to be asleep.
Such imagination has finally become a reality.
Space tour, which has been described in science fiction so far, is about to be realized.
New Shepard, a petite and travel lover, has a slow personality.
While taking over the motto of the creator of "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast", draw the sub orbital trajectory with shoes purchased online shop.
New Shepard continues test flight, look forward to her activities in the near future.
Reference:
・ Blue Origin Website
・ Club Tourism Space Tours Website