Ahead of Blue Origin sapaceflight, Bezos tells crew to 'sit back, relax & absorb the view'

Ahead of his much-awaited space trip, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos told his fellow crew members to “sit back and relax”. Bezos and three Blue Origin crew members are all set to jet off into space on July 20, Tuesday. The 57-year-old billionaire is being accompanied by his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk and teenager Oliver Daemen. 

Before the ambitious mission, Bezos and his crew members took time out to appear on CBS Morning Show. While announcing they all were very excited to be going to space, Bezos told his fellow crew members to just “sit back, relax, look out of the window, just absorb the view outside”. During the same interview, when asked if Bezos would also ask his crew members to relax and enjoy the spaceflight, like Richard Branson did before taking off his flight, Amazon founder said, “Yes, I think we are going to do that. Yes. Taking that moment of quiet to do that is going to be an important part of the journey”. 

Blue Origin spaceflight 

Bezos is set for his takeoff in his New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in West Texas. The launch time of the flight has been set for  9 a.m. EDT. He seems very calm about this launch and has been trying to help out his fellow passengers. Bezos’s capsule is entirely automated and will fly out nine days after British businessman Richard Branson went aboard his company Virgin Galactic’s rocket plane.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket has a height of 60 feet and it accelerates toward space at three times the speed of sound. This rocket will manage to cross the Karman Line, which is considered to be 100 kilometres above the limit of Earth’s atmosphere. This line has already been established by an international aeronautics body that will help to differentiate between Earth's atmosphere and space.

While the flight would last just over 10 minutes, Flight Director Steve Lanius said, "We are not currently working any open issues and New Shepard is ready to fly". On July 18, Bezos and his all civilian crewmates had kickstarted the 14-hour program as they got ready to “experience the flight of a lifetime". The New Shepard spacecraft is named after Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space in 1961.

(Image: Twitter/AP)