For the record, Ken Mattingly never did get the German measles. The former NASA astronaut, who in 1970 was pulled from the Apollo 13 crew, died on Oct. 31 at 87.
and let me tell you a little bit about the journey this these future astronauts are hopefully about to embark on. the whole ride, jim, is only about ten minutes long. the booster will blast them off from west texas at launch site one, where you see them there, you see them seated, i m sure very, very anxious about whether or not this launch is about to take of , but they ll be blasted off, and the booster and the capsule, they separate at about 250,000 feet. that s when the capsule itself will continue to coast past the karman line. that s 62 miles above earth. that s had they technically become astronauts. but, jim, it is interesting to note that the faa, they sort of redefined who was going to get astronaut wings because so many people are now getting them because of the proliferation of these suborbital flights and, you know, the growth of the commercial space sector. this really has ushered in the dawn of the commercial space
The VTVL (vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing) booster New Shepard from the Blue Origin company during landing. Blue Origin/dpaIf you ve got millions to spare and want to make space travel history, then now is your chance to book a flight to the International Space Station (ISS) - and perhaps even a .