Published: 12:51, March 29, 2022 | Updated: 13:12, March 29, 2022
Blue Origin's 4th astro-tourism flight set to launch without big names
By Reuters

This still image taken from video by Blue Origin shows Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen inside the capsule as they travel for the first crewed flight of Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard craft on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas.

The fourth commercial flight of Jeff Bezos' space tourism venture Blue Origin, offering short suborbital joyrides to well-heeled thrill-seekers and celebrity guests, was due for liftoff on Tuesday from the company's launch site in rural west Texas.

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of online retail giant Amazon, tagged along himself on Blue Origin's inaugural crewed flight to the edge of space last July

Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft was slated for launch at 8:30 am CDT with six would-be citizen astronauts strapped into the crew cabin atop the fully autonomous launch vehicle, standing nearly six stories tall, outside Van Horn, Texas.

ALSO READ: With 'Captain Kirk' aboard, Blue Origin to return to space

But unlike Blue Origin's first three commercial flights, with passenger rosters including "Star Trek" actor William Shatner, morning TV host Michael Strahan and even Bezos himself, nobody among the latest group of customers even comes close to being famous.

The most recent household name confirmed as a non-paying promotional guest, "Saturday Night Live" comic Pete Davidson, dropped out earlier this month when the planned launch was postponed for six days from its original March 23 date to allow time for additional pre-flight tests.

Days later the company announced that Davidson, 28, the boyfriend of reality TV star Kim Kardashian, had been replaced on the latest "crew" manifest by veteran Blue Origin designer Gary Lai, architect of the New Shepard reusable launch system.

Lai is flying for free. He joins five previously announced paying customers - angel investor Marty Allen, real estate veteran Marc Hagle and his wife Sharon Hagle, entrepreneur and University of North Carolina professor Jim Kitchen and George Nield, founder-president of Commercial Space Technologies.

ALSO READ: Star Trek's 'Captain Kirk' to fly to space on Blue Origin rocket

Kitchen's journey to the final frontier caps a lifelong dedication to travel that has taken him to all 193 UN-recognized countries, according to biographical material from Blue Origin.

Tuesday's entire flight, from liftoff to touchdown, is expected to last just over 10 minutes. The crew will experience a few minutes of weightlessness at the very apex of their suborbital ride, some 106,680 meters high, before their capsule falls back to Earth for a parachute landing on the desert floor.

Bezos, the billionaire founder of online retail giant Amazon, tagged along himself on Blue Origin's inaugural crewed flight to the edge of space last July.

ALSO READ: Amazon's billionaire founder Jeff Bezos to fly to space next month

He accompanied his brother, Mark Bezos, trailblazing octogenarian female aviator Wally Funk and an 18-year-old Dutch high school graduate.

Later passengers included Shatner, who became the oldest person to fly to space at age 90, "Good Morning America" co-host and retired NFL star Strahan, and the eldest daughter of pioneering astronaut Alan Shepard, for whom Blue Origin's spacecraft is named.