Blue Origin plans to fly an all-FEMALE crew into space next year – led by Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend
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Billionaire Jeff Bezos’ private space firm, Blue Origin, will send the first female crew into space next year.
Lauren Sanchez, Bezos’s girlfriend, told the Wall Street Journal that she will lead the mission in early 2024.
The identities of the five ladies who will be joining her will not be revealed until closer to the launch, which has yet to be officially confirmed by the company.
Bezos, who is also the founder and former CEO of Amazon, was aboard Blue Origin’s first manned mission into space on July 20, 2021.
Lauren Sanchez, the girlfriend of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, told the Wall Street Journal that she will lead the mission in early 2024. Bezos and Sanchez are pictured attending a premiere in London’s Leicester Square on August 30, 2022.
It reflects plans by NASA, which will send the first female astronauts to the moon in 2025 as part of its Artemis program.
Sánchez told the WSJ that she is “super excited” and “a little bit nervous” about going into space.
“It will be women who will make a difference in the world, who will have an impact and have a message to send,” she said..
Meanwhile, Bezos, who divorced his wife in 2019 after an affair with Sanchez, has been “very encouraging” about the mission and is “thrilled” it’s happening, he added.
“As much as he wants to go on this flight, I’m going to have to hold him back,” she said.
He will be cheering us all on from the bench.
Sánchez is known in the US as a media personality and news anchor, but she is also a licensed helicopter pilot.
She is the founder of Black Ops Aviation, a women-owned aerial film and production company.
According to the WSJ, Bezos credits Sánchez with helping him feel comfortable in the air again after a 2003 helicopter crash.
Bezos is also in the process of getting his own pilot’s license.
Although Sanchez has no experience as an astronaut, this shouldn’t be a problem, as Blue Origin’s goal is to send normal civilians into space.
Bezos wants to pioneer an era of commercialized space travel, even though Blue Origin customers currently have to pay several million dollars for the experience.
According to the company websitecrew members can receive full flight training in just two days.
Sánchez is known in the states as a media personality and news anchor, but she is also a trained helicopter pilot. She is the founder of Black Ops Aviation, a woman-owned aerial film and production company.
Blue Origin has two launch vehicles, including the New Shepard (pictured), named for the first American in space, Alan Shepard. The reusable, autonomous vehicle is powered by a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which is more environmentally friendly than conventional rocket fuel.
After takeoff, travelers travel at the speed of sound beyond the Karman line (the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space).
They then float weightlessly for several minutes and ‘witness life-changing views’ of Earth, before gently descending under parachutes.
Blue Origin currently has two launch vehicles, including the New Shepard, named for the first American in space, Alan Shepard.
The reusable, autonomous vehicle consists of a crew capsule and a booster rocket, powered by a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which is more environmentally friendly than conventional rocket fuel.
Blue Origin’s most recent manned flight into space, its sixth overall, took place successfully in August of last year.
The mission sent the first Egyptians and Portuguese into space: the engineer Sara Sabry and the businessman Mario Ferreira, respectively.
It also included Coby Cotton, one of the five co-founders of the YouTube sports and comedy channel Dude Perfect, which has more than 58 million subscribers.
A Blue Origin spokeswoman confirmed that the six crew members were paying passengers, although Sabry’s seat was sponsored by Space for Humanity, a nonprofit organization.
Blue Origin has not disclosed its ticket prices, though one bidder paid $28 million for a seat on the first flight in 2021.
Previous flights have included celebrity guests who flew for free, including Star Trek legend William Shatner.
However, the following month, New Shepard suffered its first failed launch shortly after taking off from Texas.
In September, the New Shepard engine shut down one minute and five seconds after liftoff of Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Liftoff was around 10:26 am ET on September 12 from the company’s West Texas site.
The New Shepard capsule quickly ignited its exhaust engine which generated at least 70,000 pounds of thrust in just a few seconds and then shut down to allow the craft to deploy its parachutes and return to Earth.
Observers were encouraged by the fact that if there had been people on board, they probably would have survived.
It was the 23rd mission overall for the New Shepard rocket program, but the first to end in failure.
Blue Origin is also working on a lunar lander, called Blue Moon, which it aims to launch in 2024.
“Blue Moon is a flexible lander that delivers a wide variety of small, medium, and large payloads to the lunar surface,” the firm says.
What is the Blue Origin Blue Moon Lander?
Jeff Bezos revealed his space exploration company’s new lunar lander, dubbed the Blue Moon, in 2019.
The spacecraft is capable of transporting and delivering payloads to the moon’s surface.
“This is an incredible vehicle and it’s going to the moon,” Bezos said.
Blue Origin has long called a mission to the moon one of its top priorities and spent three years working to develop the ship.
Blue Origin is now racing to put Americans back on the moon by 2024. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealed the ambitious next steps for his aerospace company at a top-secret media event in Washington, DC in 2019. In the On stage, Bezos took the wraps around a massive model of what will be the firm’s first lunar lander, Blue Moon.
It takes advantage of many of the same ‘propulsion systems, precision guidance, vertical landing, and landing gear’ used by New Shepard, Blue Origin’s rocket intended to transport humans to the moon.
The spacecraft is equipped with fuel cells to provide ‘kilowatts of power’ that are capable of lasting long-distance missions.
Once the Blue Moon reaches its destination, it uses machine learning algorithms to accurately land on the lunar surface.
Blue Moon can deliver several metric tons of payload to the moon, thanks to its upper deck and lower bays, the latter of which will allow for “closer access to the lunar surface and offloading,” the firm said.
With this technology, Blue Origin hopes it will prepare us to be able to send humans back to the moon as early as 2024.