On Monday morning, the company announced that Davidson, the Saturday Night Live star who has become a pillar of entertainment intrigue amid his relationship with Kim Kardashian, will fly with five paying customers on a 60-foot Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. March 23, 8:30 a.m. CT, according to Blue Origin. The announcement comes after CNN confirmed earlier that Davidson is in talks with the company for a seat aboard its supersonic rocket, which is launched vertically from a launch pad in rural Texas at Bezos’ ranch. Last year debuted a manned launch with Bezos, who flew alongside space community heroine Wally Funk, his brother Mark Bezos, and a paying customer. Since then, Blue Origin has made headlines on two subsequent flights with other big names, including Star Trek star William Shatner and Good Morning America host Michael Strahan.
Blue Origin’s goal is to make these suborbital space flights a mainstay of pop culture by bringing a 10-minute supersonic pleasure ride to welcome guests who have so far been mostly celebrities and anyone who can afford it.
Five paying customers will join Davidson on his flight. Among them are Marty Allen, an investor and former CEO of a party supply store; Jim Kitchen, entrepreneur and business professor; George Neild, former Associate Administrator of the Commercial Space Transportation Office of the Federal Aviation Administration; Mark Heigl, real estate developer from Orlando, and his wife Sharon Heigl, who founded a non-profit organization dedicated to space activities.
The crew will spend several days of training at Blue Origin’s facilities in West Texas before flight day, when they board the New Shepard crew capsule that sits on top of the rocket. After launch, the rocket will exceed the speed of sound and at the top of the flight path will break away from the capsule. As the booster heads back toward Earth for a vertical landing, the crewed capsule will continue to soar higher into the atmosphere to more than 60 miles above the surface, where the blackness of space can be seen and the windows of the capsule offer breathtaking views of Earth. .
When the flight reaches its climax, passengers will be in zero gravity for several minutes. Bezos had a remarkable time in zero gravity, throwing Skittles and somersaulting in the cabin. Others were glued to the window.
As gravity begins to pull the capsule back toward the ground, passengers will again experience intense g-forces before the parachutes are deployed to slow the vehicle down. It will then land at less than 20 miles per hour in the Texas wilderness.
Because the flights are suborbital — meaning they don’t develop enough speed or take the right trajectory to avoid an immediate fall under gravity — the entire show will only last about 10 minutes.
Blue Origin is the first company to offer regular suborbital tourist flights. Its archrival, Virgin Galactic, made its first crewed flight, including founder Richard Branson, before Bezos flew last July. But Virgin Galactic has yet to complete that flight with another crewed flight after it later became clear that the company’s space plane had deviated from its intended flight path. The company currently says it is making unrelated technology upgrades and may return to flying later this year.
SpaceX is the only private company offering flights to orbit. Last September, the company made the first-ever all-civilian flight into orbit, sending the billionaire and three select crew members on a three-day trip. And later this month, the company plans to send four paying customers on a flight to the International Space Station, which is about 200 miles above Earth.
Blue Origin has plans to build a New Glenn rocket powerful enough to reach orbit. And in light of the news that Russia may no longer sell rocket engines to the United States, those plans are more relevant than ever. The engines that Blue Origin plans to use for New Glenn, the BE-4, will also power a future launch vehicle developed by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that is responsible for important launches for US national security. ULA currently uses Russian RD-180 engines.
Blue Origin did not have specific updates on BE-4 when we reached out for comment.