Blue Origin Took Mysterious Tourist Wilson and Five Others into Space

On February 25, Blue Origin launched its tenth suborbital New Shepard spacecraft with a crew of six, one of whom chose to remain anonymous. The rocket lifted off at 10:49 a.m. local time from the company’s launch site in Texas (18:49 Moscow time). The flight lasted 10 minutes and 8 seconds, during which the crew experienced weightlessness for several minutes.

The booster landing after the crew capsule launched. Image credit: Blue Origin

The New Shepard NS-30 reusable rocket landed a couple of minutes before the crew capsule. After rising to an altitude of 107 km (7 km above the Karman line, the conventional boundary with space), the capsule was in free fall for several minutes and then descended to Earth by parachute.

The company notes that the launch was delayed by 19 minutes due to a technical malfunction, the nature of which remains undisclosed. The following tourists were sent on the NS-30 mission:

• Lane Bess is the founder and CEO of technology venture capital firm Bess Ventures and Advisory. This is his second flight on New Shepard (his first was on NS-19 in December 2021), making him the fourth person to fly the craft twice.
• Jesús Calleja is a Spanish TV presenter, mountaineer and traveler. He is known on television for his travel programs.
• Elaine Chia Hyde is an entrepreneur and physicist who runs a Chicago-based media company and another company working on “AI-enabled media products.”
• Richard Scott is a physician and executive director of a medical company (reproductive medicine specialist, endocrinologist).
• Tushar Shah is a financial services professional, partner and co-head of research at a hedge fund.
• Wilson – the name is known from the patch that can be read on his chest in the group photo. It has not been officially announced. The tourist flew anonymously.

For Blue Origin, sending tourists into hypothetical space remains an important tool in development and business, although it has already launched the new heavy rocket New Glenn once and is also betting on it. But New Glenn launches are unlikely to be too frequent, and space tourism should become a reliable support for the company’s business.