The group blasted off aboard Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism rocket at 9:01 am CT from the company’s launch facilities near the rural town of Van Horn, Texas, where Bezos owns a sprawling ranch, and took a supersonic, 10-minute flight that reached more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface before parachuting to a landing.
Strahan emerged beaming from the capsule where he was greeted by Bezos.
“I wanna go back,” he said. “The Gs…it’s not a face lift, it’s a face drop. I know what I’m going to look like at 85.”
This flight marks the first time that Blue Origin filled all six seats on its New Shepard rocket and capsule, which is named for Alan Shepard. On the company’s two previous flights — including the July flight that sent Bezos himself to space — only four of the seats were taken up.
That means the passengers had a bit less wiggle room than prior customers, especially Strahan, who is six feet, five inches tall.
Strahan spent 15 season in the NFL, all of them with the New York Giants, where he won the Super Bowl with them in 2007. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2014.
Going suborbital
The flight followed a similar profile to Shatner’s flight and Bezos before him, spending less time off the ground than it takes most people to get to work in the morning.
Suborbital flights differ greatly from orbital flights of the type most of us think of when we think of spaceflight. Blue Origin’s New Shepard flights are brief, up-and-down trips, though they travel more than 62 miles above Earth, which some scientists consider to mark the edge of outer space.
Suborbital flights require far less power and speed. That means less time the rocket is required to burn, lower temperatures scorching the outside of the spacecraft, less force and compression ripping at the spacecraft, and generally fewer opportunities for something to go very wrong.
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