Space.com By Elizabeth Howell 7/19/2021
The crew aboard Blue Origin's first astronaut launch on Tuesday (July 20) will take a giant leap into the unknown when they fly the first automated flight with an all-civilian crew, according to a media report.
Blue Origin will launch four civilians, including the company's billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, on its its suborbital New Shepard rocket on Tuesday from Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas. There has never before been a fully autonomous suborbital or orbital flight with an all-civilian crew, Teal Group space industry analyst Marco Caceres recently told Reuters.
The 11-minute space shot on a suborbital path will include four people who have never been in space before, although one of them is a highly respected civilian pilot who attempted to make it into the NASA space program in the 1960s.
More:
https://www.space.com/blue-origin-first-astronaut-launch-completely-automated
