Blue Origin launch: Meet the tourists paying to go to space on Jeff Bezos’ $2.5bn rocket

Phil Joyce, senior vice president of Blue Origin’s New Shepard program, chose to focus on the educational value of Friday’s successful launch of six tourists into space.

‘This mission amplifies the importance of STEAM [Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math] and inspiring the next generation,’ Joyce said.

It was an appropriate note to strike, given ‘Space Gal’ Emily Calandrelli’s journey into sub-orbital space today.

A 2017 daytime Emmy winner for her educational work as a host of the syndicated children’s science show ‘Xploration Station,’ Calandrelli has devoted herself to promoting science literacy, touting the benefits of space exploration, and highlighting the challenges and promise of women in STEM careers.

Blue Origin VP Joyce offered: ‘a big thank you to all our customers for the opportunity to provide this experience, and for helping to advance our mission to build a road to space for the benefit of Earth.’

(Below, the official patch of today’s New Shepard mission)

After a tender embrace with her husband (fellow aerospace engineer Tommy Franklin), Netflix’s ‘Space Gal’ Emily Calandrelli delivered a lucid play-by-play of what it felt like to travel up into space for the first time.

The first shock, she said, was the feeling of intense speed and G force once the New Shepard’s booster rocket disengages from the capsule that sends Blue Origin’s astronaut-tourists into space.

‘That kick in your pants from separation is wild,’ Calandrelli explained outside the capsule. ‘It is wild!’

‘I had to tell my brain, “This is normal. This is expected. This is supposed to be a kick in the pants,”‘ the veteran science communicator and YouTuber continued.

Once she had her moment of weightlessness in microgravity, the Space Gal said that she immediately spun around to look at Earth.

‘There was much blackness. There was so much space. I didn’t expect to see so much space,’ Calandrelli said, welling up with tears. ‘And I said, “That’s our planet! That’s our planet!” It’s the same feeling I got when our kids were born.’

‘I had that same feeling of seeing it for the first time,’ she said. ‘It was beautiful.’

The craft carrying NS-28’s six occupants can be seen parachuting down to the desert, ending their space expedition.

Blue Origin’s new and returning space tourists have just safely parachuted down back to Earth in the New Shepard capsule.

As the recovery crew drives out to retrieve these astronauts, Blue Origin’s team spoke to Karsen Kitchen, 21, who was one of six crew members for Blue Origin’s New Shepard 26 (NS-26) flight this past summer.

‘Honestly, I bet that they are just overcome with emotion,’ Kitchen said. ‘You’re just so grateful for the experience you just had.’

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student is not only studying communications and astronomy, but has created the group Orbitelle – ‘founded to encourage women of all ages to pursue opportunities in space exploration.’

(Kitchen can be seen in the top right of the third picture below)

The dust has cleared, revealing the New Shepard rocket standing tall in the West Texas desert.

‘The return is one of our proudest moments,’ the Blue Origin team said.

A successful touchdown means the booster can be reused for another space tourist mission.

The New Shepard booster’s high-speed descent let out a sonic boom as it fell back to Earth for a safe reusable landing.

The vertical landing, which began with its engines reigniting, kicked up a giant cloud of West Texas dust

NS-28 has wiggled its fins and has launched!

‘New Shepard has cleared the tower and is heading into space,’ a Blue Origins crew member announced, as the spacecraft approached ‘max Q’ the most intense phase where these space tourists will experian 3 G’s of force as they climb above Earth.

Not a cloud is visible on today’s livestream as Blue Origin prepares for blast off.

And the view is only likely to get better as the craft ascends, coasting through Earth’s stratosphere on its way past the official legal boundary of space, the Kármán line.

‘This flight today might give you the most beautiful perspective of our planet,’ a Blue Origin spokeperson boasted on company’s feed.

Blue Origin’s new and returing tourists have just been cozily secured in the New Shepard’s capsule.

Helping seal them in and take care of the final checklist items, Blue Origin’s Sarah Knights can be seen on the live cam (seen below at left).

Knights served as chief astronaut trainer for Star Trek’s Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, on his own Blue Origin flight to space on October 13, 2021.

Today’s space cowboys are suited up and ready for their flight.

From left to right: Marc Hagle, Austin Litteral, Emily Calandrelli, J.D. Russell, Henry Wolfond and Sharon Hagle.

Blue Origin’s six-person crew for this 28th flight includes a best-selling author and MIT-trained engineer known to fans of her Netflix and YouTube shows as Emily ‘The Space Gal,’ Emily Calandrelli.

Also going into space: married couple Marc and Sharon Hagle of Winter Park, Florida, paying for their second joyride out of Earth’s atmosphere with Blue Origin; alongside aviator and CEO, Hank Wolfond; another executive, JD Russell; and contest winner Austin Litteral, a financial services professional and father of two.

Calandrelli, who hosted Netflix’s “Emily’s Wonder Lab,” is flying as part of the nonprofit organization Space For Humanity’s Citizen Astronaut Program (CAP) Ambassador for this flight.

Litteral’s seat was sponsored livestream shopping platform by Whatnot.

Dr Rob Ferl — a professor of horticultural science at the University of Florida (UF) who rode past the Kármán line this August on Blue Origin NS-26 — told a meeting of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Space Studies Board just what it was like preparing for his team’s research journey into space.

Dr Ferl interviewed astronauts and citizen space tourists to prepare for his team’s conducting a science experiment in space.

He likened the process to training for the Olympics.

‘They were getting ready to take a trip away from home, to do to a performance of their lifetime, in a place and time that was strange and under a lot of pressure to be able to perform at a high level while also enjoying the event,’ according to Dr Ferl, who served as the inaugural director of UF’s Space Institute.

The scientist, who researches outer space and lunar botany methods with his colleague Dr. Anna-Lisa Paul (both pictured below), said those astronaut interviews helped them to develop a checklist for their Blue Origin flight experiment.

Their team ultimately color-coordinated experiment tubes to make them easier to find and deploy in the proper order while aboard their NS-26 mission.

‘We had a group muscle memory of when things were going to happen in flight,’ Dr Ferl explained.