Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to blast GMA anchor Michael Strahan and others into space

(via REUTERS)

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin will launch TV star Michael Strahan and a host of other paying customers into space, it has announced.

The launch, scheduled for next month, will see the Good Morning America anchor launched alongside Laura Shepard Churchley, who is the daughter of Alan Shepard, the first ever American into space. They will be “honorary guests” on the trip, and so will therefore not pay the high prices that Mr Bezos’s company charges for trips to the edge of the atmosphere.

Mr Strahan announced his participation on GMA, where he said that Blue Origin had approached him and asked if he wanted to take part. He noted that he had covered the previous launch, which saw Mr Bezos himself ride on the rocket, for Good Morning America.

Mr Strahan began his career as an American football career, before moving to host coverage of the NFL. Since then he has moved to work as an anchor Good Morning America as well as hosting game show the $100,000 pyramid.

The pair of invited guests will be joined by four paying customers: three businessmen, as well as one of their children. As such, the mission will be the first time a Blue Origin flight on the New Shepard rocket will include the full six people it can carry, Blue Origin said.

The flight will 19th trip for the New Shepard. As with Blue Origin’s other private launches – including those that took Mr Bezos himself, and recently William Shatner – the passengers will be flown to the edge of space, hover there for a short while, and then drop back down after the short trip.

The launch is scheduled for 9 December. Blue Origin will offer a livestream of the launch from West Texas.

Blue Origin claims that the short trips into space help further “the company’s vision of millions of people living and working in space for the benefit of Earth”. Mr Bezos has said that he sees millions of people “living and working in space for the benefit of Earth” in the future, and that the private trips help fund that work.

But the company’s efforts to join in the work of space exploration have largely been frustrated. Rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX has sent people into space further and longer, and will be involved in taking humans back to the Moon on behalf of Nasa – leading to a number of legal challenges from Mr Bezos and Blue Origin.