Jeff Bezos and crew hit 3 minutes of weightlessness; here's what they did

On Tuesday, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and the three other crewmates, including his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, and teenager Oliver Daemen blasted off from a desert site near Van Horn, Texas into the edge of space aboard New Shepherd rocket. As the crew hit zero gravity, one would wonder what did they do? Now, footage released and edited by Blue Origin provides a glimpse into how the Amazon founder and his crew spent their three minutes of weightlessness in the space—by eating non-chocolate candy as each of them floated inside the capsule. 

“Who wants a Skittle?” a voice can be heard asking in the aerospace company’s video. "All right. See if you can catch this in your mouth,” it continues as the crew lost gravity and floated inside New Shepherd. 

Meanwhile, after the New Shepherd landed, Funk described his experience of losing gravity as something of a sublime. ”I loved every minute of it,” he said at a news conference.”It was great. I loved it. I can hardly wait to go again.” Daemen, the 18-year-old son of a millionaire to go into space stated that "It felt way cooler than it looked.” 

During their Skittle moment, the crew could be heard whooping Woo!" and “Woo-hoo!" as they touched the Karman Line. "Oh, Jeff, look at those — it's dark up here!” The 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk can be heard saying. "Oh my word, look at the world,” she continues. Meanwhile, Bezos told ground controllers, ”There's a very happy group of people on this capsule" happy, happy, happy.”

Floating and flipping in space

In a separate video shared by Jeff Bezos, the crew can be seen floating and flipping in space owing to the prevalence of zero gravity. The crew can be seen unstrapping themselves as soon as the engines shut off upon reaching the edge of space. As soon as they unfastened their seatbelts, they began floating around the space capsule. The Amazon founder sprinkled champagne and celebrated the successful landing of New Shepard's first crewed mission. The mission on July 20 coincided with the day in 1969 when US astronaut Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon for the first time ever.