Watch live: Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, 3 crewmates to head into space

July 20 (UPI) — The world’s richest person, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and three very different crewmates are scheduled to fly into space Tuesday morning from Texas.

Liftoff of Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital rocket is planned at 9 a.m. EDT from the company’s Corn Ranch launch site 160 miles east of El Paso, although weather and technical problems can always delay the launch.

“It feels good to be in the flight suit,” Bezos, 57, said in an Instagram post Monday as he viewed a training capsule.

“I literally have had goose bumps … and they haven’t gone away,” said his brother and crewmate Mark Bezos, 53.

The brothers are to ride into space with pioneering female aviator Wally Funk, 82, and passenger Oliver Daemen, 18. They would become the oldest and youngest people, respectively, to reach space.

Daemen also becomes the first paying customer on a private company’s spacecraft. His father secured the seat for the teen after a Blue Origin auction June 12. The winner bid $28 million, but backed out because of a scheduling conflict, the company said.

“We are also flying, of course, our first paying commercial customer, and the fact that we’re doing this on a private vehicle … from a private launch site is just something that hasn’t been done,” Audrey Powers, vice president resident of New Shepard operations, said during a press conference Monday.

Bezos will become the second person to reach space aboard his own company’s private spacecraft, the Blue Origin capsule. Just nine days earlier, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, secured that record, but he launched from the public Spaceport America, which is owned by the state of New Mexico, 170 miles south of Albuquerque.

Branson’s crew members were Virgin Galactic employees who were testing the “passenger experience,” the company said.

Bezos chose July 20 for the launch because it is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. He plans for Blue Origin to eventually build orbital rockets and facilities on the moon — and even asteroids of Mars.

Blue Origin’s live broadcast starts at 7:30 a.m. EDT, 90 minutes before liftoff. The four crew members will ascend the launch tower and reach the capsule via a walkway, just like NASA astronauts have done for decades.

The crew will be strapped in and await a live countdown. Upon liftoff, the rocket will accelerate to over 2,200 mph, creating gravity forces that will feel about three times the normal pull on Earth.

After reaching space, the crew will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and then return to Earth under parachutes. The flight will be over in about 11 minutes.

Unlike many other spaceports, Blue Origin’s facility is in a remote area, on a 165,000-acre property with no public vantage points for viewing. Company officials said state troopers will close the only public highway nearby for several hours before and after launch.

Blue Origin intends the launch to begin a new period of space tourism, leading to more space exploration, CEO Bob Smith said.

“New Shepard is only the beginning because Blue Origin is a company that is not only building space vehicles, but it is … tackling the building blocks, the technology, the people, the processes and the infrastructure needed to truly lower the cost of access to space, and enable a near term future where people live and work in space for the benefit of Earth,” Smith said.

This composite image made from six frames shows the International Space Station, with a crew of seven aboard, in silhouette as it transits the sun at roughly 5 miles per second on April 23, 2021, as seen from Nottingham, Md. Aboard are: NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Mark Vande Hei; Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov; and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Joining the crew aboard station the next day were Crew-2 mission crew members: Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA | License Photo

Aboard the ISS are NASA astronauts Shannon Walker, Mike Hopkins, Victor Glover, Mark Vande Hei; Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy, Pyotr Dubrov; and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi. Joining the crew aboard station the next day were Crew-2 mission crew members: Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur of NASA, JAXA astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA | License Photo

This long exposure photograph was taken during an orbital night period on April 8 from the International Space Station 271 miles above the Indian Ocean. The Milky Way extends above the airglow blanketing the Earth’s horizon with an aurora near the bottom right of the frame. Photo courtesy of NASA

The Soyuz MS-18 crew ship, with three Expedition 65 crew members aboard, approaches the International Space Station 265 miles above Russia on April 9. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei, riding alongside Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, would dock to the Rassvet module just three hours and 23 minutes after launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Photo courtesy of Roscosmos/NASA

A full moon is pictured above the Earth’s horizon on March 27, 2021, as the International Space Station orbited 262 miles above Iran. Photo courtesy of NASA

The night lights of Tokyo are pictured from the International Space Station on February 27 as it orbited 261 miles above Japan. Photo courtesy of NASA

A volcano is pictured in the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia as the International Space Station orbited 264 miles above on April 2. Photo courtesy of Roscosmos/NASA

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used two different cameras to create this panoramic selfie, comprised of 60 images, in front of Mont Mercou, a rock outcrop that stands 20 feet (6 meters) tall on March 26. These were combined with 11 images taken by the Mastcam on the mast, or “head,” of the rover on March 16. The hole visible to the left of the rover is where its robotic drill sampled a rock nicknamed “Nontron.” The Curiosity team is nicknaming features in this part of Mars using names from the region around the village of Nontron in southwestern France. Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA spacewalker and Expedition 64 Flight Engineer Victor Glover works to ready the International Space Station’s port-side truss structure for future solar array upgrades on January 27. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

An image of the area where the Perseverance Mars rover landed is shown during an update at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., on February 18. Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA | License Photo

The first photos taken by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover after landing on the Martian surface on February 18. A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy, serving as commander of the Expedition 63 mission aboard the International Space Station, took these photos of Hurricane Laura as it continued to strengthen in the Gulf of Mexico on August 25, 2020. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

The International Space Station was orbiting over Kazakhstan and into China while the solar eclipse shadowing a portion of the Asian continent was captured by an external high definition camera on June 21. In the left foreground, is the H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 from Japan. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy (L) and Bob Behnken work on U.S. spacesuits inside the ISS’s Quest airlock on June 20. The two are slated to conduct spacewalks on June 26 and July 1 to begin the replacement of batteries for one of the power channels on the orbiting laboratory. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

This satellite image from June 14 shows a brush fire, sparked by a vehicle fire, near Bush Highway and Arizona State Route 87. By June 16, nearly 65,000 acres northeast of Phoenix had burned, making the Bush Fire the largest in the state this year and the largest burning now in the United States. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Tropical Storm Cristobal is pictured on June 7 from the ISS as it was nearing southeastern Louisiana. The orbiting lab was just off the coast of West Palm Beach, Fla., when this photograph was taken. Photo courtesy of NASA

An orbital nighttime view from the ISS as it orbited above the Indian Ocean shows the “aurora australis” and a starry sky with Russia’s Progress 74 resupply ship in the foreground on June 7. Photo courtesy of NASA

NASA astronauts Doug Hurley (L) and Bob Behnken, who flew SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft to the ISS, briefs mission controllers about their experience in the new vehicle on June 1. Photo courtesy of NASA

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft, carrying NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley, is pictured approaching the International Space Station with part of southwestern Turkey, including the coastal city of Demrem, in the background on May 31. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

Somalia’s capital city, Mogadishu is seen as the International Space Station passed over the Horn of Africa on February 19. This historic port on the coast of the Indian Ocean is home to more than 2 million people. The red and orange colors in the dune fields are due to natural chemical and weathering processes that left behind traces of iron in the sandy minerals. These dunes stand in contrast to the lightly-colored, calcium carbonate-rich sands near the shore. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

NASA’s Juno mission captured this look at Jupiter’s tumultuous northern regions during the spacecraft’s close approach to the planet on February 17. Notable features in this view are the long, thin bands that run through the center of the image from top to bottom, observed since Juno’s first close pass by Jupiter in 2016. The streaks are layers of haze particles that float above the underlying cloud features. Scientists don’t yet know precisely what these hazes are made of or how they form. NASA/UPI | License Photo

This image is one of the most photogenic examples of the many turbulent stellar nurseries the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has observed during its 30-year lifetime. The portrait features the giant nebula NGC 2014 and its neighbor NGC 2020, which together form part of a vast star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, about 163,000 light-years away. The image is nicknamed the “Cosmic Reef” because it resembles an undersea world. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

This Hubble image shows a globular cluster known as NGC 104, or, more commonly, 47 Tucanae, since it is part of the constellation of Tucana (The Toucan) in the southern sky. Scientists using Hubble observed the white dwarfs in the cluster. These dying stars migrate from the crowded center of the cluster to its outskirts. While astronomers knew about this process, they had never seen it in action until the detailed study of 47 Tucanae. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away, was imaged with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard Hubble. This image reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of “etchings” in its walls. This picture has been composed from three separate images taken in the light of ionized nitrogen (represented by red), hydrogen (green), and doubly ionized oxygen (blue). Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

The Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation, one of Hubble’s most iconic images, shows the pillars as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-colored glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-colored elephants’ trunks of the nebula’s famous pillars. With these new images comes better contrast and a clearer view for astronomers to study how the structure of the pillars is changing over time. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

This image from Hubble shows the dramatic shape and color of the Ring Nebula, otherwise known as Messier 57. From Earth’s perspective, the nebula looks like a simple elliptical shape with a shaggy boundary. However, observations combining existing ground-based data with new Hubble data show that the nebula is shaped like a distorted doughnut. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

This image from Hubble depicts bright blue newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region known as N90. The dust in the region gives these distant galaxies a reddish-brown tint. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard Hubble snapped this image of the planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula, on July 27, 2009. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away. The “butterfly” stretches for more than two light-years, which is nearly half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

Hubble’s image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

This picture, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard Hubble, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the Cone Nebula (in NGC 2264), a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the moon. The entire pillar is seven light-years long. Astronomers believe that these pillars may be incubators for developing stars. The ACS made this observation on April 2, 2002. Photo courtesy of NASA/ESA | License Photo

This composite image, produced by the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, provides a view of the Americas at night. The clouds and sun glint, added here for aesthetic effect, are derived from MODIS instrument land surface and cloud cover products. Photo courtesy of NASA/UPI | License Photo

The “aurora australis” is pictured near the southernmost point of the International Space Station’s orbital trek above the Indian Ocean on April 8. Photo courtesy of NASA

The NGC 4651 galaxy may look serene and peaceful as it swirls in the vast, silent emptiness of space. It is believed that this galaxy consumed another smaller galaxy to become the beautiful spiral. Although only a telescope like the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captured this image, could give a picture this clear, NGC 4651 can also be observed with an amateur telescope. Photo courtesy of NASA | License Photo

The Canadarm2 robotic arm and Dextre, the fine-tuned robotic hand, are remotely controlled on Earth to extract Bartolomeo from the pressurized trunk of the SpaceX Dragon resupply ship on March 25. Bartolomeo is a European Space Agency science payload system that will enable numerous external science experiments to be conducted and controlled outside the space station. Photo courtesy of NASA

The bright lights of Osaka, Japan, on Osaka Bay were pictured from the International Space Station on March 15 during an orbital night pass 259 miles above the island nation. Photo courtesy of NASA

The cities of southeast China glitter brightly during an orbital night pass on March 5 as the International Space Station soared 259 miles above the Asian continent. The brightest lights at right center represent the city of Shanghai on the coast of the East China Sea. Photo courtesy of NASA

The well-lit New York/New Jersey metropolitan area is viewed during the early morning hours on February 2 as the International Space Station orbited 263 miles above the northeastern United States. Landmarks include the dark rectangular area (lower center) that is Central Park in Manhattan. Photo courtesy of NASA

Mount Rainier is viewed from the International Space Station on February 19. Photo courtesy of NASA

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a spiral galaxy known as NGC 4689. It is known as an “anemic galaxy,” a galaxy that contains only quite small quantities of the raw materials needed to produce stars. This image was featured as ESA’s Picture of the Week during the week of February 21. Image courtesy of ESA

The ISS flies in front of the moon in February as seen from Madrid. The photographer attached a camera to a telescope and while recording at 25 frames per second captured the 690-millisecond transit on video and composed this image of 17 stacked frames. Photo courtesy of Javier Manteca/ESA

The Mississippi River runs past Lake Pontchartrain, through the city of New Orleans, La., and into the Gulf of Mexico beaming from the sun’s glint on February 7. Photo courtesy of NASA

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea and separates Spain on the European continent from Morocco on the African continent. The ISS was orbiting 265 miles above the Atlantic off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal, when this photograph was taken on February 11. Photo courtesy of NASA