Six space tourists will launch to the final frontier on Thursday (Jan. 22), and you can watch the action live.
Blue Origin is scheduled to launch its NS-38 suborbital mission from West Texas on Thursday, during a window that opens at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT; 8:30 a.m. local Texas time).
As its name suggests, NS-38 will be the 38th flight of New Shepard, Blue Origin's reusable rocket-capsule combo. Sixteen of the vehicle's 37 missions to date have carried people; the others have been uncrewed research flights.
New Shepard flights last 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to the capsule's parachute-aided touchdown. During this time, passengers get to experience a brief period of weightlessness and see Earth against the blackness of space.
Blue Origin has not revealed how much it charges for a seat aboard New Shepard. Virgin Galactic, the company's chief competitor in the suborbital space tourism industry, has done so; Virgin Galactic tickets are $600,000 apiece.
The six people going up on NS-38 are entrepreneur and pilot Tim Drexler; retired obstetrician/gynecologist Linda Edwards; real estate developer and investor Alain Fernandez; entrepreneur and technologist Alberto Gutiérrez; retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jim Hendren, who founded the company Hendren Plastics Inc.; and Laura Stiles, Blue Origin’s director of New Shepard launch operations. You can read more about them all via Blue Origin.
Stiles is a late addition to the manifest. Blue Origin just announced her inclusion today (Jan. 20), explaining that she's replacing a passenger who can no longer fly on Thursday due to illness (but will get to participate in a future mission).
The person who dropped out is presumably Andrew Yaffe, a veteran of the recycling industry who was identified as an NS-38 crewmember in Blue Origin's first update about the mission.
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