Former NASA Astronaut Explains Jeff Bezos's Space Flight

I'm astronaut Mike Massimino,

and I am going to attempt to explain to you

what Jeff Bezos's flight will be like

in just about the same amount of time

that it will take him to take that flight.

[Woman] T minus 50 seconds until takeoff.

The Blue Origin flight is only gonna be 11 minutes.

You get inside. There's no pilots.

It's totally automated. Everything should work perfectly.

If it doesn't, there are backup systems,

but there's really no human intervention

with that spacecraft, and it'll come back to earth.

So it's like, again the ride, go up,

weightless, look at the planet,

look around a little bit, and then come back down.

[Woman] Jeffrey Bezos is set to leave July 20th

with his brother, a space tourist who paid $28 million,

and Wally Funk, who is 82 years old.

This is nine days after Richard Branson

took his Virgin space flight.

Oh my God.

So let's start off with a countdown for mission control.

[Man] T minus 10, nine, eight, seven,

six, five, four, command engine start, two, one.

[rocket roars]

[Woman] And we have liftoff. Go new Shepard, go.

First, lift off.

The crew will strap in and prepare for their launch.

The engines will light and take them off the launch pad.

I think the most important thing during liftoff

is to pay attention, be alert,

and don't touch anything you're not supposed to.

That's what I would say.

Don't say, Hey, I wonder what this button does.

Don't do anything. I went to space on the space shuttle.

The main engines started up first.

We were on our backs waiting there on the launch pad

for a couple hours, making sure everything was okay.

And the main engines start,

and they ran for about six seconds.

[Man] Now checking the SRVs. Firing chain is armed.

But after those six seconds,

the solid rocket boosters would light,

and they're like giant sticks of dynamite.

You could not turn those off.

So once they light, you're on your way.

My first launch seemed like a blink.

It went by so quickly. Everything was so new.

But the second time, I felt like I was a little more engaged

because I knew what was gonna happen,

and I just wanted to enjoy it as best I could,

and I think that's the important thing.

This is a very rare experience getting a chance

to be under powered flight with a big rocket motor

underneath you taking you away from the planet.

[Woman] T plus two minutes. Flight hits Mach 3.

After a couple minutes, the G forces build up.

The maximum GS that we took where 3 Gs.

So what that means is that's three times the force

of gravity that's hitting you in the chest.

You're on your back because that's the best way

to take that G force is right in the chest.

It feels like a pile of bricks is on your chest,

like you have three big dudes sitting on you.

That's what it felt, like three times my body weight

hitting me in the chest,

and that lasted for about two and a half minutes.

[Man] Standing by for separation.

When you experience zero gravity

is dependent on when your engines stop running.

So I was under those G forces,

and then the engines cut, and it got really quiet.

And then all the violence, all the shaking stopped,

and everything started to float.

I was still strapped in my seat,

but my arms just rose up like this.

[Woman] T plus three minutes.

Capsule separates from booster. Zero G begins.

Next, the crew will enter zero gravity.

They will experience weightlessness for a few minutes.

One of the first things I noticed when I got

to space was I didn't feel so well.

I just felt nauseous, and I knew this could happen.

It happens to most astronauts

because your inner ear is not working.

It works on gravity.

So the vestibular system, inner ear,

zero gravity, nothing's happened.

It's telling the brain you are perfectly still,

but as you're moving around, your eyes are saying,

Oh no, you're not, you're moving around.

So you can get that conflict,

and it can lead to disorientation and nausea.

My advice to anyone going on one of these trips is medicate.

Take the nausea medicine that's available to you.

They have pretty good nausea medicine these days.

Ask the medical officer.

There's gotta be someone that knows

about that stuff working at these companies.

What do you suggest?

Take that stuff,

and I think that'll help you enjoy the experience

'cause why take the chance?

You might unstrap and feel really awful,

and it's only a couple of minutes,

so that's what I would do.

[Woman] T plus four minutes. Flight reaches apogee.

And the flight will reach its apogee,

which means its highest point away from the planet.

There'll be able to unstrap, float around a little bit,

and take a look out the window.

So we would wanna be really careful.

When you first get the space, you're out of control.

When I first got the space and I went to look out the window

and I felt out of control, it's like learning to walk again.

You're just moving around.

And I grabbed something, and I grabbed a circuit breaker,

which I wasn't supposed to grab, and pulled it out,

and it wasn't supposed to happen.

I said, Oh my goodness.

The first thing I've done in space was something wrong.

But of course, I reported it to my commander in the ground,

and he said, Don't worry about it.

It was just switch that really wasn't needed at that time.

So I just put it back in.

But it made me realize you gotta be careful around you

and watch what you're holding onto.

So if you get out of control,

you're liable to do something you might regret,

so you wanna be really careful about that.

You usually wanna go slowly and be under control

so you can enjoy the experience,

and you can move around more,

actually more efficiently and quickly when you do that.

So go slow to speed up.

And that's what I wanted to do on my first space flight,

of course, was unstrap and take a look at the planet,

and that's what I did.

I got a chance to see the planet

from space for the first time,

and that's the moment that you're looking forward to.

The overview effect is the term that is used

for the experience that people have gone

above the Karman line.

Astronauts, when they view the planet,

you're seeing it from a different perspective,

and it can change the way that you feel about the earth

or our role in the universe or the beauty of our planet,

and all those different emotions and feelings

that people have tried to describe over the years

since we first started sending people to space

has been putting this category of the overview effect.

And I think most people feel that as well

where you see the thickness of the atmosphere

and you see the beauty of our planet.

I think it mainly, it's an emotional experience

of what it's like to look back on our home from space.

[Woman] T plus six minutes.

Time for reentry. Astronauts rebuckle.

Then the crews will start their descent back toward earth.

As they get closer to the planet,

the G forces will build up again,

and they'll start to feel heavy.

After being weightless, going from zero to something,

feels a lot more than it would be.

Your body is getting used to that again,

but I was in space for a couple weeks.

I don't know what it's gonna be like for them.

It'll be an interesting question.

What was it like after just being there for a few minutes?

Did your body have to go through another orientation

to readjust to gravity?

So we'll see what happens, but it's more a function

of slowing down and having the earth pull you back in

than it is of any particular altitude or speed.

Tomorrow is a big day for you.

You've had all kinds of big days,

but is tomorrow the biggest day for you?

They've all been very special.

And that's because? It lands.

So in my flights on the space shuttle

when we were coming back to earth,

we were orbiting at 17,500 miles an hour.

And so what we did is we pointed our rocket ship,

the rocket itself, the backend of the space shuttle

where the engines were, not the main engines,

but these two big engine bells on the side,

and we would burn those engines.

We'd light 'em up.

What that did is that propelled us in the opposite direction

and acted like putting on the brakes.

And so as you slow down, you'll get lower and lower,

and then eventually, you'll pick up the Earth's atmosphere

as your altitude lowers.

That builds up friction, lot of heat,

in the case of the shuttles, about four to 5,000 degrees

outside of the space shuttle got really hot.

We felt fine inside, but I could see the tail.

I was on the flight deck,

and I could see by holding up a mirror,

I was able to look out the window

and see the tail of the space shuttle.

And I was filming it for a while.

I was like, Well, it's cool.

It looks like the tail is almost on fire.

And I was like, That's scary. Enough of that.

And then we got below that,

and we picked up the horizon of the earth again.

What's different about the Jeff Bezos

and Richard Branson's spaceflights compared

to what we've done up till now is that this truly,

I think, marks the entry point of commercial space flight.

Unlike spaceships that carry astronauts

to the international station,

they're typically flying for their governments,

this is a new way that people can get to space

with a commercial company and a private enterprise.

[Woman] T plus nine minutes. Parachutes deploy.

And then they will land with a parachute very close

to where they took off, like almost an amusement park ride.

We got lower and lower, and at one point,

as we were picking up the atmosphere,

it almost seemed like we were in a cloud.

We would just exciting the particles around us.

So it was almost like we were in a soup

What would you say?

Like when you're flying an airplane.

You're in a soup, you just in a cloud.

You can't see anything, and I had no sensation of motion.

We still didn't have Gs really building up at that point,

but I had no visual indication out the window

that we were moving at all,

and I felt like I was perfectly still,

no indication of motion at all

until I looked at our velocity indicator.

We were still going about 12,000 miles an hour

at that point.

That's the only thing that told me we were still moving.

[Woman] T plus 10 minutes. Capsule lands.

Finally, touchdown.

The crew will have completed their journey

to space and back.

I think they're pretty much gonna be able

to get off and walk away just

like they're getting off an airplane

in both the Blue Origin and the Virgin Galactic examples.

Your body hasn't had any deterioration.

It hasn't been much of an adaptation

'cause it wasn't very long to zero gravity,

so I think they'll come back and be

in one gravity without any issues.

We had been in space, in my case on the shuttle,

usually, typically, it was about a two week journey.

That's what it was for me because you're adjusting

to gravity, but that was the goal.

You wanted to do that and look up and point

to the spaceship and not fall over,

like I was a zombie or Herman Munster or somebody

walking around, Frankenstein moving around,

so I wouldn't fall over very slowly.

On my flights, once we landed,

you're back on the runway now.

You're grateful to be home and safe.

I don't think you're

gonna need the same physical conditioning

that I needed when I was an astronaut to fly to space.

I think it's gonna be more

like the amusement park restrictions.

[Woman] Mission accomplished.

I would love to go on one of these flights

with Richard Branson or with Jeff Bezos

or with anyone else that was interested in going,

but I don't wanna pay that much money for it.

So I'm not paying for that experience,

but I would be happy to go

if they want an interested observer or maybe some help.

I could be the flight attendant.

I'm happy to do whatever they would want me

to do on one of these flights.

I would love to do it,

but the ticket price is a little much for me right now.

I think I'll wait till the price comes down

if I have to pay for it.

Even though only it's a couple minutes,

they will get a chance to look around,

to look at our planet, to experience weightlessness,

and especially that view of our planet

and what it looks like from space.

They'll be able to get a pretty good look at it,

even though for just for a couple minutes.

We understand a lot about how our planet works

by being here on the planet,

but there's still lot of big questions,

like where did we come from?

How did we get here?

And how to best take care of our planet

that I think we can only answer by traveling to space

'cause it gives you that different perspective.

So I'm interested to see what these two guys in particular,

who are very interesting people,

very successful entrepreneurs,

have experienced a lot of things in their lives.

I wanna find out how this experience

of flying to space will have changed them.