Jeff Bezos and his crew successfully completed a spaceflight. They were flying on the New Shepard, the rocket ship made by his space company, Blue Origin.
About the flight: The 10-minute flight went up more than 60 miles above Earth.
The billionaire space race: Earlier this month, Richard Branson became the first person to ride into space aboard a rocket he helped fund — beating Bezos by nine days.
A handful of billionaires — which is about as many billionaires that exist on planet Earth — have been working up plans to get to space over the last few weeks. And it appears to be a real competition of rich white men. On Tuesday, one of them made it: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took off on his Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship this morning, taking with him his brother Mark Bezos, an 18-year-old student named Oliver Daemen, and 82-year-old Wally Funk — an aviator who was supposed to make it to space on an all-woman mission in 1961 that was scrapped.
The Amazon CEO’s rocket flight took him on a 2,300 mph outing to the edge of space, where Bezos and his passengers remained for a moment before heading right back down to Earth. After the rocket used up most of its fuel getting to its destination, it hovered there momentarily before gravity brings the capsule back to the ground, with the landing made easy thanks to several parachutes, according to CNN.