![]() Wally Funk, 82, a pioneering female aviator who was one of the famed Mercury 13, women tested by NASA as potential astronauts during the early days of the U.S. He is a former ad executive and is on the leadership council of the non-profit Robin Hood, which fights poverty, according to Business Insider. ![]() Mark Bezos, 53, the younger brother of Bezos and a millionaire in his own right. Jeff Bezos, 57, who founded Blue Origin in 2000 and made billions as the founder of. New Shepard's first crewed flight will carry four passengers, but no pilot as the space capsule is an automated system. Who is Blue Origin launching on New Shepard? The rocket will return autonomously to its launch site and land, and the crew capsule will descend beneath a parachute. Typically, New Shepard flies well above the 62-mile (100 kilometers) Kármán line that international authorities recognize as the boundary of space. The company will also be sharing mission updates all day via Twitter.īlue Origin has not announced if it will have a special host for the webcast similar to rival Virgin Galactic, which recruited comedian and The Late Show host Stephen Colbert for its July 11 launch of billionaire Richard Branson. ![]() The time of that press conference has not been announced, but Blue Origin will stream it live online and will simulcast it if possible. After the landing, a live broadcast with the astronauts will be available at. EDT (1600 GMT), which will be livestreamed on and also here if possible.Ī typical New Shepard flight lasts 11 minutes. EDT (1300 GMT), but could change depending on weather or technical matters.īlue Origin will hold a prelaunch press conference on Sunday, July 18, at 12 p.m. EDT (1130 GMT) at and here at, if possible. So while space travel's environmental impact is currently believed to be relatively insignificant, there's reason to suspect that at current rates of the industry's growth, it's poised to become a massive polluter.The launch of New Shepard's first crewed flight will be broadcast Tuesday (July 20) beginning at 7:30 a.m. We can expect a lot more methane-powered launches in the future, in other words. In fact, methane is increasingly viewed as the ideal rocket fuel by space firms due to, among many factors, its high density, stellar performance, and cost efficiency. According to the International Energy Association, methane alone is responsible for nearly a third of the Earth's warming temperatures.īlue Origin emitting several dozen more tons of the stuff annually may not be that much in the grand scheme of things - globally, the energy industry released 135 million tons of the stuff in 2022 - but remains worth scrutinizing nonetheless.įor one, it is far from the only space firm to use methane as a rocket propellant - SpaceX and its troubled Starship is a notable example. Methane is a greenhouse gas and a significant driver of climate change. Even with Carbon Mapper's latest findings, we can't narrow down its emissions for sure, but an air permit application spotted by Bloomberg may help clue us in.Īccording to the document, filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (2020) in 2020, Blue Origin estimates that it will emit around 3.4 million cubic feet of LNG per year, or roughly 60 tons of methane. Until now, though, the Bezos venture's methane footprint has remained a relative unknown. "We frequently transfer LNG from our suppliers into storage tanks at our engine test stands," the spokesperson told Bloomberg. And according to a company spokesperson, these emissions are par for the course. Its flagship rocket engine, the BE-4, uses what's known as liquefied natural gas (LNG) for propulsion, made almost entirely of methane. It's certainly no secret that methane figures into Blue Origin's plans. Without more data, there's no telling how long those emissions lasted. Using data gathered by an instrument on board the International Space Station, Carbon Mapper estimated that about 1.5 metric tons of methane were spewing out of the Blue Origin facility per hour, appearing as a conspicuous cloud on its website's map. The unexpected detection was made in June by Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that scans for greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. Things are getting kind of gassy at Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space tourism firm.Ĭase in point, Bloomberg reports that a Blue Origin facility in West Texas is regularly emitting so much methane during recent rocket tests that plumes of the stuff are being spotted from space.
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