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 you get in the ride, go up Weightless, look at the planet, look around a little bit and then come back down.

Jeffrey Bezos is set to leave July 20 with his brother, a space tourist who paid $20 million wally funk who is 82 years old.

This is nine days after Richard Branson took his Virgin spaceflight.

So let's start off with the countdown for mission control t minus 10 98 7654 Command engine start two one and 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.

You know, I don't say I wonder what this button does.

Don't do anything.

I went to space on the space shuttle.

Uh, the main engine 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 engine start and he ran for about six seconds novel check of the 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 seems like a blink.

Didn't even I didn't even know it went by so quickly.

Everything was so new.

But the second time, I 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 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 T plus two minutes, light hits mach three.

After a couple of minutes, the G forces build up the maximum Gs that we took were three Gs.

Now, 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 forces 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 kind of what I felt like Three times my body weight hit me in the chest and that lasted for about 2.5 minutes 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 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 T plus three minutes capsule separated 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 two spaces, I don'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 Medicaid.

Take the nausea medicine that's available to you.

They're pretty good, pretty good nausea medicine these days.

Ask uh 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 uh I think that will help you enjoy the experience because why take the chance, You might unstrapped and feel really awful and it's only a couple of minutes.

So that's what I would do.

T plus four minutes flight reaches apogee and the flight will reach its apogee, which means its highest point away from the planet will be able to unstrap, float around a little bit and take a look out the window.

So we would want to be really careful when you first get to space, you're kind of out of control.

When I first got to space, I went to look out the window and I felt kind of out of control.

It's just it's like one in a walk again, you just move.

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 like, 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 said, don't worry about it was just a 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 here and watch what you're holding on to.

So if you get out of control you're liable to do something you might regret.

So you want to be really careful about that.

You usually want to go slowly and be under control.

So you can enjoy the experience, you can move around more actually more efficiently and quickly when you 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 unstrapped and take a look at the planet and that's what I did.

I got a chance to 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 from a different perspective and it can change the way that you feel about the Earth or or role in the universe or the beauty of our planet and that 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 uh kind of put in 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 mainly it's a it's an emotional experience of what it's like to look back on our home from space t plus six minutes time for reentry astronauts re buckle, 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, it feels a lot more than it than it would be your your whole your body's is getting used to that again and that.

But I was in space for a couple of weeks.

I don't know what it's going to 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 of slowing down and having the Earth pull you back in than it is of any particular altitude or speed.

Tomorrow's a big day for you.

And then, I mean, you've had all kinds of big days, but it's kind of the biggest day, very special.

And that's because we're landing so on my flights on the space shuttle, when we were coming back to Earth, You know, we were orbiting at 17,500 mph.

And so what we did is we pointed our rocket ship, the rocket itself, the back end 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 we'd we'd light them up.

What that did is that propelled us in the opposite direction and kind of acted like putting on the brakes.

And so as you, as you slow down, you'll get lower and lower and then eventually you'll pick up the Earth's atmosphere as your, as your altitude lowers, that builds up friction.

A lot of heat in the case of the shuttle is about 4 to 5000 degrees outside of the space shuttle was got really hot, we felt fine inside, but I could see the tail held up, 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, oh that's kind of cool.

It looks like the tail is almost on fire.

And I was like, that's kind of 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 space flights compared to what we've done up till now, is that this truly, I think marks the entry point of commercial spaceflight.

Unlike space ships that carry astronauts to the international space 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 T plus nine minutes parachutes deploy and then they will land with a parachute very close to where they took off, you know, kind of like almost an amusement park ride.

We got lower and lower.

And at one point we picked up like that as we're picking up the atmosphere, it almost seemed like we were in a cloud.

We were just exciting the particles around us.

So it's almost like we're in a soup and we're like, we would say like when you're flying an airplane, we were in the soup, you just in the cloud, you can't see anything.

And I had no sensation of motion.

You know, we still didn't have G.

S 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're still going about 12,000 miles an hour at that point, That's the only thing that told me was still moving 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 um In both in both the blue origin and the virgin galactic examples.

Your body hasn't had any deterioration.

There hasn't been much of an adaptation because it wasn't very long to zero gravity.

So I think they'll come back and be in in uh in one gravity without 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 the gravity.

But that was the goal.

You wanted to do that and look up and point to the spaceship and not fall over.

You know, like I was a zombie or Herman Munster or somebody like walking around Frankenstein are 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 we need that I needed when I was an astronaut to fly to space, I think it's going to be more like the amusement park restrictions.

Mission accomplished.

I would love to go on one of these flights with Richard Branson or with Jeff Bezos, with anyone else that was interested in going.

But I don't want to 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.

You know, 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 that 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 of minutes, they will get a chance to look around to look at our planet, to experience weightlessness and especially that view of our planet in what it looks like from space, They'll be able to get a pretty good look at it, even though for this for a couple of minutes we understand a lot about how our planet works by being here on the planet, but there's still a 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 because 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.