unfit news show , billionaire . On the same sidereal day Jeff Bezos blasted off onBlue Origin ’s maiden crewed spaceflight , the US Federal Aviation Administration ( FAA)updated its definitionof a " commercial spaceman . ” As per the new standard , Amazon ’s ex - chief executive officer and fellow fertile - guy - who - went - to - space Sir Richard Branson may not be considered astronauts in the heart of the FAA ’s Commercial Space Astronaut Wings Program . accord to the program ’s first rule modification since 2004 , astronauts must be part of the flight bunch and make contributions to space flight base hit .
The “ billionaire outer space race ” was taken up a snick this calendar month . Instead of the old blank slipstream of nuclear - armed superpower contend for space exploration supremacy , this new showdown involves men with inordinate amounts of money using their wealthiness to ramp up commercial spaceflight services . The design is tomake space travel more accessiblewith the view of overspread humanity across the Solar System and beyond , free from Earth andits labor laws .
Blue Origin ’s first - ever human quad escape was plunge to the upper stretches of Earth ’s atm on July 20 . Bezos , the founder of Blue Origin and Amazon , was joined by his brother Mark Bezos , 18 - year honest-to-goodness Dutch scholarly person Oliver Daemen , andWally Funk . Funk is an 82 - class old pilot who was part of the so - called Mercury 13 , the thirteen American woman who passed all the same physiologic screening tests necessary to join NASA ’s spaceman corps in 1961 but were excluded from going to space . ( It would be 22 years beforeSally Ridebecame the first US woman in space . )
Unfortunately for Bezos , the rich man in the Solar System , the Blue Origin mission was narrowly vanquish to the punch byVirgin Galactic ’s Unity 22 mission , which saw British billionaire Bransonreach the edge of spaceon July 11 .
To be granted “ commercial spaceman wings ” by the FAA , personnel must reach an altitude of 80 kilometers ( 50 miles ) above the Earth ’s surface . ( It ’s worth noting that aside from the FAA and NASA , the world governing body for aeronautic and astronautic disc , theFédération Aéronautique Internationale , consider " blank " to be theKármán line – the imaginary boundary 100 klick ( 62 mile ) above sea level . ) While Bezos and Branson did meet the FAA ’s criterion , the new definition also requires travelers to have “ establish activities during flight that were essential to public prophylactic , or contributed to human space flight safety . ”
Did their missions achieve this ? Well , that ’s up for argumentation . While it could be argue the launches may finally lead the elbow room towards technical development that cause it easier and flash to found satellites and spaceman in the time to come , it could also be argued that these feats were little more than ticks on a billionaire bucket list .
However , honorary commercial astronaut wing can be awarded by the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation to individuals who show an “ sinful contribution or beneficial military service to the commercial human space flight industry . ”
The FAA has n’t commented directly on the recent flights of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic , but a spokesperson from the federal delegacy toldCNNthey are not presently reviewing any submissions .
