Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has successfully launched six tourists, including the first Black man to train as an astronaut, to the edge of space.
The 11-minute suborbital flight lifted off from Blue Origin’s base in West Texas just after 9.30am local time on Sunday morning, launching the passengers into zero gravity so they could experience weightlessness and view the Earth’s horizon.
The rocket took them over Kármán Line — widely considered to be the border between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space — before the six new astronauts landed safely back in a western Texas desert.
The journey marked the first time Blue Origin – the space travel company owned by Amazon billionaire Bezos – has sent passengers into space in two years, after a failed launch attempt in December 2022 prompted a hiatus.
During that launch, the rocket had started to veer off course shortly after liftoff, prompting the escape system to kick in and catapult the capsule off the top. The capsule ultimately landed safely, but the rocket came crashing down to Earth.
Two years on, Sunday’s flight was a success.
On board the rocket was 90-year-old Ed Dwight, the first Black man to train as an astronaut.
He was handpicked by the John F Kennedy White House to join the Aerospace Research Pilot School in 1961 after spending several years in the Air Force.
While there, he faced racism from his colleagues including First Commandant of the school Chuck Yaeger, who died in 2020.
“They were all instructed to give me the cold shoulder,” Mr Dwight said of his fellow trainees earlier this year.
“Yeager had a meeting with the students and the staff in the auditorium and announced it — that Washington was trying to shove this N-word down our throats.”
As the program went on, Mr Dwight became one of 26 people recommended by Air Force officials to join NASA.
But when the space organisation released their list of chosen astronauts in 1963, Mr Dwight didn’t make the cut, according to The Associated Press.
After JFK was assassinated, Mr Dwight said that he thought his career as an astronaut was finished, according to The Wall Street Journal.
He retired from the Air Force in 1966 and never made it into space — until today.
“This is just fabulous,” Mr Dwight said after landing back on Earth on Sunday. “I thought I didn’t need this in my life…but I lied. I did.”
Mr Dwight’s son and grandchildren had planned to attend the launch.
“It’s really going to hit home for them what their grandfather has accomplished,” Mr Dwight’s son told the Journal. “I think it’s going to be one of those things like, ‘Wow, that is my family, my forebears, that is going into space,’ something not many people have done.”
Alongside Mr Dwight, the five other space tourists were: venture capitalist Mason Angel; French entrepreneur Sylvain Chiron; software engineer and entrepreneur Kenneth L. Hess; retired accountant Carol Schaller; and aviator Gopi Thotakura.
The capsule they flew in was, notably, a reusable spaceship.
“This capsule and today’s flight has already flown to space eight times,” officials with Space Origin said during a pre-flight livestream.
