know, never look back. jonathan mcdowell, what are your thoughts as you watch this? well, you know, it looks absolutely flawless. it opens up i think they became the about 584th or 5th people in space. we re going to see i think a huge increase in that total of the number of human beings flying in space in the coming years thanks to these tourist flights. so i think that s the real, real impact here. and it s extraordinary, jonathan, when you think this capsule can be reused and the booster rocket as well. that s right. so, this was the third flight of this very same stack, and that actually, you know, people, when they started reusing rockets, i don t want to go on a reused rocket, but actually i think it really does give you confidence that you ve worked the bugs out of this vehicle and you can use it again and again.
in our pocket money to take one of these flights, it will come. it will come. but it s going to be decades, i think. and we re going to see i think the real change will be when they could bring down the price of orbital tourist flight. a lot of people have forgotten that there have been tourists on the international space station and even to jim s point, a japanese journalist flew on mirror, i believe. so this is been building a long time. it will come. but i m afraid we have to be patient about the price coming down because this is a sporty thing to achieve. yeah. colonel, let s talk about wally funk for a moment. 82-year-old woman, pilot and now an astronaut. i believe that i heard, when we heard the audio when they landed, i believe it was her voice thanking jeff bezos saying i would never have gotten this
well, there is a broader spectrum of age on this flight than we ve ever had before in space flight. wally is five years older than john glen was. he used to have the record. and oliver is 7 years younger that s the cosmonaut that flew at 25. there is a huge wealth of perspective here, experience and life opportunity, and of course there is jeff and his brother. each of those people now needs to think about what just happened. like, they need to replay it in their mind over and over again, not just the champagne and opening the hatch, but the actual uniqueness of the human experience. and interplay that with what s coming with our technology. where is this going to take us? and then they need to try and share that with as many people as possible. they are rare amongst humans on earth right now. and if they just keep it to themselves, i think they will have squandered the entire experience. we re not sending robots. we re not sending, you know, iphones up there. these are human beings
probably there is going to be a press conference at 11:30 eastern time, 10:30 local time here with jeff bezos and the others, so we ll obviously bring that to you as well. colonel chris hatfield, how, how important is this? because obviously, look, a lot of people will be looking at this skeptically, look, this is billionaires playing with toys, and this is stuff that doesn t have any impact on, you know, a family s life right now. hardly anyone can afford a flight like this. what is the importance of this? there will always be cynical criticism, no matter whatever happens in history. and obviously when you re trying to do something that is really hard for the very first time, it takes a lot of resources. i mean, blue origin has 3,500 employees all earning salary every single day just to try and make this thing possible. but now that the and it used to be it took entire
interpretation of this, their insights into it, and then how that can be applied to future decision makers to inspiring young people today, that is the real quest right now. that was real it the whole purpose of this flight. you know, astronauts of the past had often made the point, seeing the blue marble from space makes borders disappear, right, conflict between countries and man disappear, right. and you see us as one human race, right, from afar. to this point, miles o brien, space has been the sole province of nations, right. it granted folks went to space decades ago, but these are now private companies, two in the last nine days going to space. the phrase you ve heard many times, space is hard. it s hard for nations. now private companies are conquering it. tell us the significance of that going forward.