Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – Billionaire Richard Branson’s success in reaching the edge of space on July 11 will be followed by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos. If nothing goes wrong on July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, will travel to space on the New Shepard Blue Origin spacecraft. This July 20 moment marks the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
However, Jeff Bezos had to reduce his confidence in order to survive 100% on the flight. The reason is, the flight made by the world’s richest person is different from the space trip previously carried out by billionaire Richard Branson, the owner of Virgin Galactic, who had first succeeded in space on 11 July.
Branson went into space on the VSS Unity spacecraft previously transported with the help of SpaceShipTwo. He and his colleagues into space like flying using an airplane in general with a capsule with two pilots.
While Bezos penetrated to reach sub-orbital altitude using the New Shepard, a rocket that accelerated vertically and without a pilot. Launching New Shepard like flying a rocket is usually riskier, which is likened to the first manned mission.
Reported from Live Science, Sunday (18/7) the New Shepard rocket operates independently and can accommodate up to six passengers. The rocket will be launched from a West Texas launch pad to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers), which is often considered the limit of space.
“Space travel itself, is a business that is considered risky. The main factors that influence the risk include the level of experience of the launch company, the number of launches carried out by a particular vehicle and the type of rocket engine used,” said Joseph Fragola, CEO of Asti Group, LLC and a independent systems engineer.
Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, has flown the New Shepard 15 times during unmanned tests, with only one partial failure in which the passenger capsule landed safely but the rocket booster crashed.
“The track record is certainly a very positive record,” said Fragola.
However, after the 1986 Challenger incident, Fragola calculated that the highly complex shuttle fleet would fail about 1 in every 120 launches. The figure turned out to be quite accurate considering the program flew 135 missions over 30 years and suffered losses.
According to records, two tragedies during this period resulted in the Challenger spacecraft being destroyed within 73 seconds of flying and killing all seven crew members on board.
But experts agree that most launches are well-prepared, allowing their engineering team to overcome problems and have a failure rate of about 1 in 1,000 flights.
“Compared to an airplane, it’s more terrifying,” said Fragola.
Looking at Blue Origin’s experience so far, Fragola estimates that the odds of going wrong with the rocket are at a 1 in 100 and 1 in 500 flight, with the best estimate being a 1 in 200 chance of an accident.
For the record, the race of the world’s richest people to penetrate the edge of outer space continues. Previously, billionaire Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Galactic, had already made his way to space on July 11.
On July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos prepare to go into space. In addition there are two others, namely legendary aerospace pioneer Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.
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