MIAMI — Lane Bess choked up Monday describing watching the sunset from his Miami Beach home.
It’s not that the 60-year-old technology entrepreneur, who has spent a third of his life in Florida, is unfamiliar with one — far from it. The difference is now he’s seen the Earth from miles above it.
On Saturday, Bess spent a brief but intensely memorable 11 minutes of the morning in space aboard billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle. Although he was in sub-orbital space for just a few minutes, Bess described the experience as life-changing.
“It just puts things in perspective,” Bess said, recalling the voyage.
“You think about the disease we’re experiencing, the political jockeying and unrest that goes on, the underprivileged people who are starving, and then you just look at this planet and think to yourself that there’s enough here; that everyone should be OK,” he said. “I have a much different feeling — I’m a different person. The things I hear on the news, they’re very upsetting things. ... But you just see this tranquil planet, and it’s a peaceful feeling.”
The flight was the third with a crew on New Shepard, Blue Origin’s reusable rocket system. Bess was accompanied by his 23-year-old son Cameron, making them the first father-son duo to ever journey into space together. Cameron Bess plays on the video game streaming platform Twitch and identifies as pansexual.
“My entire life I’ve wanted to make people who feel like they didn’t have a place feel welcome,” Cameron Bess said in an interview before the flight.
Neither Blue Origin nor the Besses would disclose the passenger cost of the trip into space. The pair was joined by “Good Morning America” host and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan; Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard; and two other American businessmen. Their space capsule reached an altitude of more than 60 miles above Earth, sustaining a maximum velocity of 2,244 miles per hour.
Bess said the exhaustive classroom training prepared the voyagers for every moment of the flight. After weightlessness training he performed out of Cape Canaveral, he said he never felt a twinge of anxiety.
“The flight prep made even the most fearful of us feel good,” Bess said.
Upon touching down in west Texas, Bezos, who in July was aboard Blue Origin’s inaugural space trip, greeted the crew. Bess, who made his business fortune in Silicon Valley, said he wants to focus the remainder of his career on making investments in space technology, in part inspired by the Amazon founder.
“I think my next focus will be to push this movement toward space. Not in people going to space, but the technologies that will be developed for space that will benefit us here on Earth,” he said. “Hopefully they can make sure that the Earth is healthy, and that we are able to be here a lot longer.”
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