Videos: Blue Origin New Shepard rocket vehicle flies to edge of space and back

Been a busy week for NewSpace rockets. On Tuesday morning Blue Origin, the space company owned by Jeff Bezos, launched its second-generation New Shepard rocket, which sent an unmanned crew capsule to nearly 100 km. The capsule separated from the booster and came down separately by parachutes after this suborbital flight. The booster landed vertically on a pad. The flight took place at Blue’s remote test site in West Texas.

The goal is to fly paying passengers and science/technology experiments routinely starting in about a year or so. The adventure seekers will experience the rapid acceleration from riding a rocket, then enjoy about 5 minutes of weightlessness after the capsule separates from the booster. They will see the curvature of the earth and the dark sky of space through the huge windows,  and then fall back into the atmosphere and float back to earth after the parachutes open for a soft landing .

This video shows the view from inside the capsule for the entire flight from liftoff to landing. The instrumented dummy is cleverly named Mannequin Skywalker.

 

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