Blue Origin’s NS-21 flight was, for most of the world, a minor event. However, for Brazil and Mexico, it had a special flavor. After all, the second Brazilian, Victor Correa Hespanha, and the first Mexican, Katya Echazarreta, to go into space flew on board.
It’s yet another move that shows that Jeff Bezos’ company’s mission is not merely to pave the way for space tourism to become a reality — as it is doing — but also to inspire those who stay here on Earth along the way.
We see this trait on every crewed flight ever flown with the New Shepard system. Without opting to take only those who are wealthy enough to pay for a ticket, the company has taken advantage of every occasion to make the flight special for those who stay here on the ground.
Right off the bat, they corrected a brutal historical injustice. In the first manned flight, NS-16, carried out less than a year ago, in July 2021, was on board, in addition to Bezos, his brother Mark and young Dutch student Oliver Daemen, the aviator Wally Funk, who at 82 years old became the oldest person to go into space, beating the record held by John Glenn.
Funk had been selected by NASA to be an astronaut on the Mercury project in the late 1950s, before the agency decided to have all men on the flights. She didn’t have the money to pay for her ticket; she had been invited by Bezos.
On the next manned mission, NS-18, none other than William Shatner flew. Actor who became famous living space adventures on TV as Captain Kirk, from “Star Trek”, broke Funk’s age record and became the oldest in space, then 90 years old. It was also at the invitation of Bezos.
On NS-19, two more guests: Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the first American astronaut, Alan Shepard, and Michael Strahan, anchor of the TV show “Good Morning America” and former football player for the New York Giants.
Flight NS-20 also had a celebrity on board, American comedian Pete Davidson, from the “Saturday Night Live” program, but a change in the mission’s date ended up taking him off the passenger list, and Gary Lai, the New Shepard’s chief designer.
With Blue Origin’s NS-21 flight, in addition to including a Brazilian and a Mexican, the company reached the enviable mark of having launched 25 people into space. It is a short trip, three minutes in a vacuum and in a feeling of weightlessness, and the system is simple, compared to space launches aimed at national programs, but the cadence and safety with which these missions were carried out must be highlighted.
It is a key step towards making them more popular, as well as the strategy of maintaining some diversity among passengers, avoiding falling into a format where only tycoons fly — something that would quickly become tiresome. By having some seats occupied by celebrities and ordinary people, Blue Origin keeps the flame burning in everyone who dreams of seeing Earth from space one day.
