Just after two hours of the space flight, the crew members talk about one flight not being enough. The talk comes from all the six members, despite Evan Dick having gone the second time to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard. Last year he was on the 19th mission (NS-19).
An investor, Dick said, “Once you see it for yourself, you want to go again, you want to go for longer, you want to experience it. It was an obvious thing [to go again]. It was just a matter of whether it was going to be possible, and I thank Blue Origin for making it possible.”
Before and during the launch, the talk is all about having a successful launch and landing. Once all the crew members are safe and sound back on earth, the experience makes it all different. It was no different in this launch as well. The space tourists talk about the spectacular view from 66.5 miles, the highest point they reached during their 10 min flight on New Shepard. Echazarreta, whose seat aboard New Shepard was the first to be sponsored by Space for Humanity’s Civilian Astronaut Program talked about her experience. She said, “I can assure you that nobody can truly imagine it until they experience it. Even now, just thinking back kind of makes my eyes teary.”
She further added, “As soon as I looked at our planet, I had just a single tear running down my face and I didn’t even notice. I felt the wetness on my face and I touched it and I realized what was happening. It was just realizing how connected we really are to our planet and how important it is for us to take care of what we have here.”
Looking at earth
Harding, who previously broke the round-the-world record for an aircraft flying over the North and South poles and who dove to the lowest point on Earth, Challenger Deep, with fellow NS-21 crewmate Vescovo, agreed with Echazarreta, who is now the first Mexican-born woman to fly into space.
“The Earth was what I was waiting to see, and it was as spectacular as I had been told it would be,” he said. “Looking down on Earth, we should all work a lot better together. That was the ‘overview effect’ that I’ve heard about, and there is so much wasted effort on this planet not working together. The world [could] move forward so much faster and more productively if we all did.”
“The view was unbelievable,” said Vescovo, who was the first person to repeatedly dive to Challenger Deep in a submersible of his own design. “To see the complete curvature of the Earth and seeing the thin skin of the atmosphere of this beautiful, blue and brown planet that we have and then just the blackness of space in the brilliant sun — to have that right in front of you and seeing it was truly a transformational experience.”
