Leer en Español
Jeff Bezos, the richest man on Earth, reached space on Tuesday after taking off from a base in West Texas aboard the New Shepard rocket, in which he exceeded 65 miles in altitude to then undertake the return to Earth, in a journey lasting about 11 minutes.
However, a Change.org petition titled “Don’t let Jeff Bezos return to Earth” while the billionaire was in orbit had already reached 165,000 signatures from people who wanted the Amazon founder to remain in space.
Jeff Bezos’ trip to space
Inside the spacecraft manufactured by Blue Origin, the aerospace company created by Bezos in 2000, the founder and until recently CEO of Amazon traveled accompanied by his brother, Mark; the 82-year-old pilot, Wally Funk; and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch student and son of a billionaire.
Once the trip, which began with a 12-minute delay due to technical adjustments, was completed, the capsule with its four occupants landed safely in a desert landscape near the launch site, in the vicinity of the small Texas town of Van Horn, where moments before the New Shepard rocket arrived.
“The best day of my life,” Bezos exclaimed from inside the capsule once it landed.
As of today, Bezos is another billionaire who stands as a pioneer of tourism beyond the planet, after Branson, at 70 years of age, reached the frontiers of space aboard a plane manufactured by his company Virgin Galactic, with which, at a speed three times faster than the speed of sound, he crossed 49 miles high.
