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Blue Origin picks its fourth passenger for first crewed flight

01 July 2021
 Dan Ackermann

Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos has invited Wally Funk — one of the women aviators who passed the Mercury astronaut tests in the 1960s — to join him and two others on the company's first crewed trip to the edge of space.

Why it matters: Funk's turn as an astronaut is years in the making, after the Mercury 13 — a group of women who mastered the same tests as NASA astronauts in the 1960s as part of a private initiative — were passed over by NASA.

What's happening: The suborbital flight is expected to launch from Texas on July 20, on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

  • Bezos and Funk will be joined by Bezos' brother Mark, as well as a yet-to-be-revealed auction winner who paid $28 million for their seat aboard the capsule.
  • "I didn't think that I would ever get to go up," Funk, who had a long career in aviation post-Mercury 13, said in a video posted by Bezos to Instagram.

How it works: Blue Origin's New Shepard is designed to take a crew of passengers up about 62 miles above the surface of the Earth using a rocket and capsule.

  • Once at altitude, the capsule separates from the rocket, allowing those inside to feel a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of the Earth against the blackness of space before descending back to the planet under parachutes.
  • Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is also working toward beginning commercial operations for its suborbital space system sometime in the coming year.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.