Jeff Bezos travels to space, returns safely on New Shepard rocket

The 57-year-old billionaire and Ammzon CEO Jeff Bezos blasted into space on Tuesday in the first crew flight New Shepard from its Launch Site One in the West Texas desert in the United States. He was accompanied by Mark Bezos, his brother, Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneer of the space race, and an 18-year-old student. They travelled in a capsule with the biggest windows flown in space offering stunning views of the Earth.  All four passengers safely back to Earth after their 10-minute, 10-second trip. The New Shepard capsule reached at an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), allowing the passengers to experience weightlessness while admiring the curve of the Earth.

"It's my generation's job to build the road to space so that the next generation can unleash creativity," Bezos said. The new flight marks the beginning of a new era for the company, which has been in a tough competition with SpaceX for commercial space operations. Bezos, 57, founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live. New Shepard, built by Bezos' company Blue Origin, is designed to serve the burgeoning market for space tourism. The spacecraft lifted off at 14:12 BST (09:12 EDT) from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.