rocketing skyward, blue origin confirming they re strapped in, the door is closed. now we have watch and wait as final preparations are under way. the crew together for the past 72 hours, going over everything one more time, rehearsing the final sequence that will be important to know. piloted completely from the ground. they have a safety switch to use to abort on board the ship. but right now we have countdown temporarily paused. but it since resumed. you can sense the excitement here. we are 20 miles from where this rocket will take off in the west texas desert. people are gathering on nearby highways, hoping for a glimpse of history about to be made. halle? and there s no not like some launches you may have seen in florida where there s a place for everybody to gather and watch. highways are about as close as
reporter: the launch is nine days after richard branson skimmed the edge of space. bezos didn t call it a competition, there are key differences. this is a true rocket that will be piloted from the ground. branson had a pilot on board, then dropping back to the west texas desert floor via parachute for hopefully a soft landing. bezos wanted to stress the fact he hopes this paves the way, pointing to the young astronaut on board, trips like this he hopes to inspire the next generation of space goers. he says they have future plans in place for that, chris. if all goes according to plan, two more this year, september and october, and hope to be able to reuse the rocket going skyward tomorrow morning. chris? morgan chesky on location. tomorrow, tune in for special coverage. bezos and team take off in texas.
what blue origin passes. it s 62 myiles above earth. blue origin goes higher. the duration of the missions differs greatly. virgin galactic, the entire mission will be about 90 minutes. blue origin, the ride, it s 11 minutes. that s a big difference. both companies have said that potential customers might be interested one day in flying both, if they can stomach the price tag. we don t know what the average blue origin ticket will go for. 600 customers have paid around $200,000 to ride on virgin galactic s system. one other key difference is that virgin galactic s system is piloted. blue origin s system is automated. a lot of difference. they both touch the edge of space, making their passengers on board astronauts but kind of depends where you are. virgin galactic, you are only an
it does not look like an airplane like most people might view this vehicle and say, oh, it looks likes an airplane, it looks familiar, it looks like the shuttles did. but blue origin system is a space capsule. it s fully automated but as we know, today s pilot was piloted by two pilots. they ve had many other piloted flights. they were the gliders, they were the mother ship. of course, this is still in its test phase so i want to point out that all the passengers on board were all wearing parachutes in the off chance there was an anomaly as well as supplemental oxygen on board. i told you we saw the emergency response vehicles driving out to the runway. those were all precautions taken because this was a test flight. virgin galactic saying there will be two other test flights before they begin their operations in 2022. as you pointed out, brian, our
allowing more and more humans to eventually get the experience of seeing earth from outer space, and so this all started in the morning after a brief delay due to weather and spaceship 2 taking off from spaceport america, attaching to the belly of mother ship eve named after richard branson s own mother. it detached from the mother ship, the rockets fired and piloted by two test pilots and the ship rocketed up to the edge of space and that s where the six people onboard the unity 22 mission officially became o astronauts and experienced several minutes of weightlessness before it glided back down and was back down at spaceport america and shortly after that there was the victory celebration. everyone onboard got their astronaut wings and there was champagne and richard branson who was normally so eloquent had