Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to include six passengers in next flight
While space tourism still looks to be something that only a select few can enjoy, space tourism company Blue Origin is striving to introduce the idea to more people by including six passengers in its next manned flight.
Agence France-Presse reports that the next Blue Origin flight on May 20 will have as one of its passengers the first Mexican-born woman to go into space, as well as the second Brazilian to go into space. Lift-off will happen at 8:30 a.m.
Guadalajara, Mexico-born Katya Echazarreta will be the first Mexican-born woman to head into space after getting sponsorship from the “Space for Humanity” program, whose aim is to make space access available to people. Katya Echazarreta was chosen over 7,000 other candidates. At 26, she will also be the youngest American woman in space.
Victor Correa Hespanha is also one of the six passengers to go on Blue Origins' fifth manned flight and will be the second Brazilian to go into space.
The 10-minute flight will take the passengers to the Karman line, 100 kilometers high in the air and marks the start of space. Once there, passengers can take off their seat belts and float in zero gravity while admiring the curvature of the Earth through the rocket windows.
Before this fifth manned flight, Blue Origins flew Amazon founder - and also Blue Origins' owner - Jeff Bezos into space. During that flight, Bezos was accompanied by his brother and two other record-setting passengers, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk and 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen, the oldest and youngest person to fly in space, respectively.
In July of last year, another billionaire, Richard Branson, also made the trip to space, this time aboard his own Virgin Galactic spacecraft.
If space travel is too expensive for you, why not engage in some earthbound tourism instead? Check out a list of countries that accept the Philippine vaccine certificate in the gallery below.
