Jeff Bezos and His Penis-Shaped Rocket Successfully Launched Into Space
JEFF BEZOS successfully launched himself, his brother, and two other people into space yesterday onboard the extremely phallic-looking New Shepard spacecraft. (You can rewatch the whole Livestream here.)
The ship took off from a launchpad in Texas just after 9:00 A.M. About seven minutes in, the head separated from the shaft and achieved weightlessness.
The whole thing took about 10 minutes . . . or, the average break time an Amazon employee gets over a 12-hour workday.
The flight made history by carrying the oldest and youngest people to ever fly in space: 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk and an 18-year-old Dutch student named Oliver Daemen.
The booster rocket is actually reusable . . . which is admittedly kind of cool. It landed safely on a landing pad two miles from the launch site.
After the capsule landed, Bezos said, quote, “Very happy group of people in this capsule. We’re so grateful to everybody who made this possible. Thank you.”
Later, he told reporters, quote, “Every astronaut, everybody who’s been up into space, they say this, that it changes them, and they look at it and they’re kind of amazed and awestruck by the Earth and its beauty, but also by its fragility.
“And I can vouch for that.”
Bezos is going to fly two more human missions before the end of the year, and he’s already selling tickets for future flights. There’s no word how much they cost, but he claims sales are already approaching $100 million.
Virgin Galactic is reportedly charging around $250,000 per flight. Bezos’ company . . . which is called Blue Origin . . . is expected to be around the same. But both companies hope to eventually lower prices.
(CBS News)
