When they will buckle up again, parachutes deploy, and the capsule floats back to earth, and you will watch every single minute of it live right here on msnbc. so let s bring in our own aerospace expert, tom costello. he is at the launch site near van horn, texas. tom, give us the facts. set the scene for us. who is on board and what should we be watching for on the ground? let s be honest, we probably wouldn t be here for the second launch of the blue origin jeff bezos rocket if it weren t for the fact who s on board this rocket. it is, as you mentioned, captain kirk, right? the iconic star fleet captain we all grew with up, at least i grew up with and what a brilliant piece of marketing on behalf of bezos. he is as you mentioned, 90 years old. i was with him last night, and with jeff bezos last night,
Near van horn, lindsey riser in our own mission control with a closer look at the new shepherd rocket, dr. may gemson, a former nasa astronaut and the first black woman in space and back with us, leroy chiou the former commander of the international space station, and garrett riseman and dr. jose hernandez. let s start with tom, good morning, tom, do we know anything about this delay, why the delay? reporter: hang on one second. i m going to give you an answer. it looks like the it looks like we ve resumed the countdown, guys. so they were going through the checklist, pardon me for listening to the voice of mission control, which is actually blue origin. this was a vehicle readiness issue. it was not weather-related. it was not atc-related. this was vehicle readiness, something on that checklist kind of had them pause for a while, but they just as you came to me, they were picking up the countdown again, so i think
Origin will blast off for its second manned flight. it comes just months after it launched bezos himself into space as part of its inaugural crew in july. today, science fiction is actually going to become reality when captain kirk himself, actor william shatner will become the oldest person to fly to space at the age of 90. that tops legendary astronaut wally funk who flew on blue origin s first mission at age 82. let s talk about what s about to happen in the next couple of hours. the crew of four will board the shepherd rocket for their 11-minute flight, and that s when they launch. after liftoff, the rocket will stay intact until about 45 miles high, and that s when the cab separates from the booster. it s eventually going to hit zero gravity, and that s when the crew will be able to get out of their seats, float around and have that monumental moment looking back at earth. they re going to hit peak at about four minutes, just beyond the border of outer space. then it s the ride ba
Little picture, paint us a picture of what is going to happen in just over 42 minutes. reporter: we want to give you guys an intimate look of what they re going to experience up there, but also more about this spacecraft. let s go ahead and give you some fast facts first. we re talking about blue origin s new shepherd. this is its 18th mission to space. its second crewed mission. this spacecraft is designed to fly autonomously. it could hold six people, four are going to be on board today, of those four none of them are pilots. let s dive into the components here of new shepherd. of course we have that crew capsule, it s pretty spacious, 530 cubic feet. this is what is going to detach from the rocket here. then we re going to keep going down here, those drag brakes, that is what is going to slow the booster down on its descent by about half. again, those two components are going to detach. they re going to have separate trajectories. we re going to show you that in
We take for granted all the materials. all of those things exist, and there is a robust program in space exploration about how do we ensure that the benefits the things that we learned, that space technologies come to us here on earth. and so i think we have to separate out this particular tourist ride from what space exploration has done and still has the potential to do even more. what an important distinction, as we see the astronauts climbing up those stairs, heading up to the capsule. tom costello, talk to me about the actual rocket that they re going to be sitting on top of. yeah, the new shepard rocket, named after alan shepard, the first american to go into space. that rocket is 60 feet tall. it has about 110,000 pounds of thrust. it s going to be it s a liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket. what does that mean?