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The New Space Race is Full of False Promises and Confusion
As former Amazon CEO and current daring billionaire Jeff Bezos blasted off into space, people had questions.
We’re all talking about space again thanks to back-to-back, crewed, edge-of-space flights by two disparate space crafts.
Standing amid of group of people glued to a TV screen, I listened as they all commented on Blue Origin’s impending New Shepard launch on Tuesday.
“Why can’t we see inside?”
“Who’s flying?”
“Does the rocket take it to space and steer it back?”
“Would you go to space?”
Then silence as Bezos’ Liquid Hydrogen/Liquid Oxygen-powered, unfortunately shaped spaceship ignited and then smoothly lifted off the launch pad. The hush continued as the rocket with a capsule carrying Bezos, his brother Mark, Wally Funk (soon to be the oldest person ever in space), and teenager Oliver Daemen (soon to be the youngest person ever in space), streaked to roughly 62 miles over the earth.
Even though Blue Origin has been around for 20 years, and NASA turned to private spaceflight companies like SpaceX to help it return humans to space, I could tell that most of these people were not following the…
