Bezos' Blue Origin completes fifth crewed flight launch
STORY: The company's suborbital joyride lasts about 10 minutes from liftoff to touchdown and hits an altitude of about 350,000 feet (106 km), treating passengers to a few moments of weightlessness before a descent back to Earth for a parachute landing.
It forms part on an ongoing effort by a handful of companies including Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson-founded Virgin Galactic that are striving to make space travel a reality.
Some of these companies, along with NASA, have touted such missions as a milestone in the expansion of privately funded space-based commerce, constituting what industry insiders call the "low-Earth orbit economy," or "LEO economy" for short.
The International Space Station (ISS) has hosted several wealthy space tourists over the years.
Analysts applauded Saturday's launch, the latest in a series of ambitious rocket-powered expeditions, for being bankrolled by private investment capital and wealthy passengers rather than taxpayer dollars, six decades after the dawn of the space age.
