Michael Strahan just took a trip that was almost literally out of this world.
On Saturday, Dec. 11, the Good Morning America co-host and former NFL star was blasted to the edge of space along with five other people onboard Amazon founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocketship.
After they landed, Strahan told people on the ground, "I wanna go back."
He also said, "You got to get that perspective."
Strahan was joined by space industry executive Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, venture capitalist Lane Bess, his son Cameron Bess and Laura Shepard Churchley— the eldest daughter of late legendary U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard, who in 1961 became the first American to fly to space. The rocketship itself is named New Shepard, after him. Both Strahan and Churchley were honorary guests while the other four crew members were paying customers.
The capsule was launched from Blue Origin's private facility in West Texas, accelerated to more than three times the speed of sound to pass beyond the 80-kilometer boundary (about 50 miles) that the U.S. uses to mark the edge of space, CNBC reported.
and reached above 340,000 feet altitude before returning to Earth a few minutes later, the outlet said.
The capsule was flown autonomously, with no human pilot, and returned to land in the Texas desert under a set of parachutes. The launch lasted a total of about 11 minutes, during which the crew experienced about three minutes of weightlessness, the outlet said.
"The Gs — it's not a facelift; it's a face drop. I know what I'm going to look like at 85," Strahan joked to people on the ground about G-force.
The trip marked Blue Origin's sixth mission of 2021 and 19th overall. It also marked the company's third human spaceflight and the first time they have launched six passengers at once.
This year, the company has sent a total of 14 people, including Bezos himself, who joined its first crewed flight to space in July.
He has been competing in the private space tourism market with Elon Musk's SpaceX as well as Virgin Galactic, whose founder Richard Branson became the first billionaire to reach the edge of space during a flight taken about a week before Bezos.
In July, after his trip to space, Bezos said that Blue Origin has sold nearly $100 million worth of tickets for future passenger flights to the edge of space, CNBC reported. The company, who plans to launch several missions in 2022, has not revealed how much a single ticket costs.
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