Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, launches its third flight, with six astronauts on board

(CNN Spanish) – Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, launches its third flight this Saturday with six astronauts on board.

New Shepard Mission 19 is scheduled to take off from a stretch of West Texas.

In this third mission, the crew is composed of Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the first American to fly into space; Michael Strahan, co-host of Good Morning America; Evan Dick, founder of Bess Ventures; Dylan Taylor, executive and philanthropist of the space industry, and Cameron and Lane Bess, who will become the first father and son to travel to space.

Shortly before Jeff Bezos flew into space in July, Strahan was one of the few journalists who asked the billionaire directly why he was going. Little did the public know that Strahan would be offered the same opportunity a few months later.

“Being there on the first launch … it was really mind-blowing,” Strahan told his GMA co-hosts last month when he publicly revealed that Blue Origin had chosen him to fly on the next space launch, scheduled for Saturday. “I believe that [los viajes espaciales] They will bring a lot of technological advancements and also innovations for us here on Earth, and I just wanted to be a part of that. “

This mission comes two months after the company’s second manned launch where 90-year-old actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the original series “Star Trek,” traveled aboard the Blue Origin suborbital spacecraft.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience, I am so full of emotion, just extraordinary,” a visibly excited Shatner said to Bezos immediately after exiting the capsule. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope I can keep what I feel now.”

Blue Origin’s first space trip was manned by Bezos himself along with his brother Mark Bezos; Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot and one of the women from “Mercury 13”; and a recent 18-year-old high school graduate named Oliver Daemen.

The launch timeline

7:25 hours before takeoff: the rocket moves to the launch pad

3 hours before takeoff: propellant charge begins

45 minutes before takeoff: astronauts head to the launch tower

35 minutes before take off: astronauts begin to enter the crew capsule

24 min before takeoff: crew capsule hatch closes

Competition from space tourism

How different are the flights offered by billionaires Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson? In addition to its duration — Blue Origin’s is 11 minutes, Virgin Galactic’s is 90 minutes, and SpaceX’s is 3 days — the maximum altitude of each flight is a key point of discussion.

In fact, it was Blue Origin who mockingly made a comparison suggesting that Virgin Galactic flights were not space travel, since Virgin Galactic’s VSS spacecraft does not fly above the Kármán line, an altitude that is internationally considered the space limit (100 km).

Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft surpasses the Kármán line by reaching a maximum altitude of 105 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, while Virgin Galactic’s VSS spacecraft reaches a maximum altitude of 86 kilometers.

And while the International Aeronautical Federation (IAF) and many other organizations use the Kármán line to determine when a space flight takes place, the United States Army and NASA have another definition of space. According to them, space begins 19 kilometers below the Kármán Line, which is 80 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.

For its part, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft reaches an altitude of 540 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

CNN’s Jackie Wattles, Kerry Flynn contributed to this report.