"NS-21"Blue Origin completes 2nd space tourism flight in 2022
Six tourists, including a British pilot, a Brazilian, and a Mexican, made a 100 km jump into space
June 04, 2022 Blue Origin performed today another flight of its New Shepard system, the NS-21 mission, with six passengers for a 107 km altitude jump in a suborbital trajectory. The NS-04 flight 7 rocket and the RSS First Step crew capsule took off at 09:25:02 EDT (13:25:02 UTC) time from Launch Site One in Texas, USA, and the flight lasted 10 minutes and 06 seconds, between takeoff and parachute landing of the passenger capsule. The spacecraft reached 107,040.57 meters of apogee, at a Velocity of 3,604 km/h
The company did not disclose how much passengers paid. Historically, since the first tourist flights opened by Russia in 2001, it is mainly the very wealthy who can directly participate in these spaceflight opportunities, although this particular crew includes a person from the non-profit Space For Humanity-sponsored citizen astronaut program. , which takes individuals to the space for free, following an application process. This mission will be the fifth manned flight of the New Shepard program and the 21st in its history.
Image Credits; Blue Origin Webcast
NS-21 Passengers (Natural Selection)
Evan Dick was the first person to fly aboard a New Shepard vehicle twice, having participated in the NS-19 mission on December 11, 2021.
He is a pilot, engineer, investor and managing member of Dick Holdings, LLC.
Previously, he was Senior Vice President of DE Shaw and Managing Director of Highbridge Capital Management.
He supports the Darwin Foundation, Population Relief International Corp. and Starfighters Aerospace through charity or as a volunteer.
Victor Correa Hespanha, 28, is a civil production engineer from Minas Gerais, Brazil. His seat was sponsored by the Crypto Space Agency, and is identifying himself as “the world’s first cryptnaut ”, which has drawn scorn on social media. He was also the second Brazilian to fly in space, after cosmonaut Marcos Pontes, who in 2006 flew the Soyuz TMA-8 mission to the international space station as part of a visiting expedition. To book the ticket, the engineer invested around R$4,000 in NFT. The purchase gave the right to participate in the CSA draw to be one of the six participants of the trip promoted by Blue Origin.
Hamish Harding is president of the Action Aviation business jet brokerage, as well as an executive pilot.
He holds several aviation world records, including one in 2019 with retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts around the world for aircraft flying over the North and South Poles.
Harding has also visited the South Pole twice and dove to nearly 10,100 meters in a submarine in 2021
Victor Vescovo is co-founder of the private equity investment firm Insight Equity. He completed an “Explorer's Grand Slam,” which is an adventurer's community term for skiing the north and south poles and climbing the highest mountains on the world's seven continents, including Everest. He is a commercially rated multi-engine jet and helicopter pilot, as well as a certified submersible test pilot, and has visited the Challenger Deep (the deepest point in the ocean) twelve times, according to Blue Origin. He also served 20 years in the US Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer, retiring as a commander.
Katya Echazarreta, born in Guadalajara, was the second Mexican-born person to visit space, after Rodolfo Neri Vela, a payload specialist astronaut on the Atlantis STS-61B mission in 1985. She is the co-host of the YouTube series.” Netflix IRL” and “Electric Kat” on the CBS show “Mission Unstoppable”. She spent nearly four years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, working on space missions including the Perseverance Mars rover and the Europa Clipper, which will launch towards Jupiter's moon Europa in 2024. Katya is pursuing a master's degree in electrical engineering. and computing at Johns Hopkins University and aims to “provide representation for women and minorities” for those interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), according to Blue Origin.
Jaison Robinson founded commercial real estate company JJM Investments and co-founded Dream Variations Ventures with his wife Jamie. Robinson describes himself as an avid diver and skydiver with a variety of adventure activities under his belt, such as breaking the sound barrier in a Mig-29 jet, doing an Eagle Scout, playing water polo at Stanford University and becoming a finalist in " Survivor: Samoa” in 2009.