Jeff Bezos will no longer be the richest person on Earth on 20 July because the Amazon founder will be blasting off into space on the first crewed flight of his New Shepard rocket ship,
The Guardian reports.
Joining Bezos on the flight will be his younger brother, Mark, a former advertising executive and volunteer firefighter. The third member of the crew is being decided by a charity auction, with the seat currently priced at $2.8m (£2m) five days ahead of the deadline for bids.
“You see the Earth from space, it changes you,” Jeff Bezos said in a video announcing his plan. “It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth. I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
“I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going on the first flight,” Mark Bezos added. “And then when he asked me to go along, I was just awestruck. What a remarkable opportunity, not only to have this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend.”
The flight will take just minutes from start to finish, with three minutes of weightlessness as the crewed capsule brushes over an altitude of 100km, known as the Kármán line, the formal beginning for space. The booster rocket will land autonomously seven minutes after liftoff, and the crew capsule will float to earth on parachutes three minutes after that, with a planned touchdown in the West Texas desert.
