separate from the rocket itself. yes, that is why gary laid the architect i was speaking of. he said this is the safest spacecraft for human space flight that s ever been created. he worked for nasa. he s been with blue origin 17 years. there are no pilots on board. the crew are passengers. she won t be piloting this. i don t know if bezos has a license, but i know he s taken no pilots on board. fully autonomous. they have what s called a full envelope escape. if at any point, the capsule has the ability to jettison away. that full envelope of escape they say makes this spacecraft so safe. they do have supplemental oxygen on board just in the off chance there is a cabin depreciate you arization. it goes 62 miles up just to the edge of space. the carmen line.
charge. there you have it. the historic space flight, carrying jeff bezos landing successfully in the desert of west texas after a ten minute, 20 second flight. crossing the carmen line into a suborbital flight. turn the control room down so viewers can hear us about what we expect to see. crew members, getting ready to take them out of the capsule. we will see them the first time since they launched into space. bring in morgan chesky, stephanie ruhle with clayton anderson, 30 year nasa veteran who spent five months on the international space station in 2007. getting ready to see them here back on earth. incredible moment. heard bezos call it the best day ever. they were remarking, clayton, how easy zero gravity was.
so clearly there is a ton of competition between the two of them. but we did just get a congrat lattory tweet from richard branson who said well done, mark and wally and oliver and all the best. so that is from richard branson. there has been competition about who went higher. this rocket went higher than richard branson did, but richard branson was first. yes. so the new shepard pasted that imaginary demarkation of space. the carmen line at 62 miles. we re getting the technical techniques in. but they went up 66 miles an the carmen line at 62 and virgin galactic went to 53. that is above the earth which is what the u.s. government recognizes as the boundary of space. but the blue origin team loves to say that hey, if you take a ride on a virgin galactic
explain the carmen line. it s not a term i had heard much about before, but obviously given they pointed out richard branson did not go above the carmen line. it s an imaginary line. it is the internationally recognized boundary of space. but the u.s. government and the u.s. military, the faa, they recognize it a little bit lower. so virgin galactic says, hey, we were all astronauts. we became astronauts because we crossed the threshold that the u.s. government recognizes in space. blue origin right before branson s launch, they put out that graphic saying, hey, we re going to go further. when it gets 62 miles or so up in the air, the capsule separates. the booster falls back to earth as we said. it s going to land vertically. how long is the capsule up there for? actually, the separation happens before they hit the carmen line. the separation happens right before that moment and then both the booster and the capsule pass that carmen line.
watching the feed from horn ranch where the spaceport is, where the rocket is about to lift off. the control room is ticking through each of the systems, declaring each a go. we are as you see less than ten minutes to liftoff. clayton, this is a significant moment for jeff bezos, not just because he is blasting into outer space, he is crossing the so-called carmen line, it is significant, where most experts believe outer space begins. but there s back and forth. talk us through that. in order to qualify internationally to become an astronaut the carmen line, 62 nautical miles, 100 kilometers, important milestone to pass. in my book, the ordinary space man, my launch chapter is 62 and counting because we have a ways to go after that. significant day for these people, very excited for them,