A Washington-based private spaceflight company Blue Origin was established back in 2000 by Jeff Bezos to take part in the space race, in which SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and other companies as well as space agencies around the world peg away at the competition. Bezos’s company designed New Shepard, a fully reusable suborbital rocket system.
New Shepard takes astronauts and scientific research payloads to cross the Kármán line that is some 62 miles, or 100 kilometers, above Earth’s surface. This line is an internationally recognized boundary of space.
Last month, Blue Origin sent Star Trek’s beloved Capt. James T. Kirk –William Shatner– to the edge of space for touristic purposes, of what Shatner described the historic joyride “unbelievable” as the 90-year-old is now the oldest person to reach space.
Senior Director Gary Lai and engineer Ryan Curtis of Blue Origin speak of the New Shepard design in the video embedded above by the space company.
