Anyone watch this today? I had heard about it, and saw a headline just before it was all about to begin. I had a bit of time I could kill so I tuned in.
It seems like this was generally a space-lite trip reaching a little over 50 miles high, but the whole thing happened in around 30 minutes it seemed. About 15 minutes to reach altitude on the plane, a very brief rocket boost that pushed them shooting over 3,000 mph straight up to around 250K feet - then coasted to around 280K feet before falling back, with about 3 minutes of weightlessness, and about 10-15 minutes to get back to the ground.
The event was a sales pitch, but it was very well done, and Richard Branson had a nice interview shortly after coming back. Even with tickets being 250K a pop, I could see a lot of people going for the experience that was sold today.
Next up - Bezos in another week or so. Hard to see him topping today though.
Bezos is going higher, past the so-called Karman Line (62 miles up) which is the internationally accepted boundary for space. 25% higher counts for something…
Sure, it counts for something, but that is a somewhat artificial boundary, so does it change the experience much? The bigger difference will be taking off on a rocket and floating back down with a parachute compared with the more controlled approach of coming back on a glider. And also, is there enough space to move about during the few minutes of weightlessness.
I didn’t know who that person is, so I thought this was a real message from Amazon at first. The first clue for me was “our very own space daddy.”
