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Everybody for joining us live for new shepherd’s first human flight. We are at t minus 45 minutes and here the astronauts come there. You see jeff bezos in the foreground, oliver damon stepping into the ribbon crew member seven kevin sproke there on the right. As well as wally funk, what a moment for her at the age of 82, she will become the oldest astronauts who have ever flown into space and there she is loading into the ribbian. While he was part of the mercury 13 program back in the 1960s. The program to train women to go to space that ultimately was canceled, but now it is her moment today is an incredible day for her all right now, we’re going to be waiting for mission control to get a go for astronaut load out to the pad that’s. When they will, the rivien will start heading out towards the pad they’re actually going to pass right behind me here, i’m, certainly going to give them a wave. They then will pass mission control get some last minute, love from uh from our team there, as well as their families, and then they will head down the road to space to the launch pad and we’ll go for loading there. They go everybody Music. What a moment you can probably hear our team already losing it down here we are super excited and there they are high fives from everybody. What an incredible moment they’re coming over here, just behind my right shoulder a moment: we’ve been waiting for here at blue origin.

So much hard work has led to this moment how exciting wally funk the bezos brothers, oliver damon, our four crew members, are heading out to the launch pad there. They go see you guys, oh my gosh. They are in for the flight of a lifetime and just a couple yards to my left here. That is mission control, and here they go passing by mission control. There you see jeff bezos waving to the and team gon na, hang a left there as they head down the road to space. Now, while we watch them travel down that road to space, they’ve got just a couple of moments: it’s a long two mile road there we’ve got a couple of moments. Why don’t we meet aviation icon, wally, funk you’re in zero gravity for four minutes you come back down, we land gently on the desert surface, we open the hatch and you step outside what’s. The first thing you say i will say honey. That was the best thing that ever happened to me: i’ve been flying forever and i have nineteen thousand six hundred flying hours. I have taught over three thousand people to fly private commercial instrument, flight engineer, airline transport, gliding. Everything that the fa has i’ve got the license for, and i can outrun you Music back in the 60s. I was in a mercury 13 program. They asked me, do you want to be an astronaut? I said. Yes, they told me that i had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys, so i got a hold of nasa four times.

I said i want to become an astronaut, but nobody would take me. I didn’t think that i would ever get to go up Music. Nothing has ever gotten in my way they said well, you’re, a girl. You can’t do that. I said guess what it doesn’t matter. What you are you can still do it if you want to do it, and i like to do things that nobody has ever done. We’Re going to fly you up into space on the very first flight that’s, your i can’t tell people that are watching how fabulous i feel to have been picked by guru origin to go on this trip. You’Re gon na be an astronaut. Oh finally, now love every second of it. I can already wait Music. We are just so thrilled and, frankly, honored to help wally funk finally realize her dream of going to space. Now recently, i was lucky enough to spend a couple of moments with her right here at the desk. Why don’t we take a look wally. It is a pleasure to meet you um. As a as a fellow pilot. You are an inspiration, so thank you. You don’t know how great it is to meet you that you are a pilot. I don’t want you to go, fly more in that glider and then and jumping oh that’s, great and hopefully follow in your footsteps and go on new shepard one day. Absolutely i mean so: wally you’ve you’ve waited a while to go to space um silly question, but are you excited? No? No! No, of course i said since i got on the airplane and i got to fly the airplane and get here and meet all of you.

This is so fantastic on, so on launch day. What do you think is going to be the most exciting thing? What are you looking forward to the most lift off climb undo and be able to move around in the if, if there’s room, i want to do a lot of stuff, because i’ve done that in in other situations – and you were just telling me a second ago – You’Re going to take your camera up there and you’ve got a postcard that you’re going to take a photo with that is what’s going to be on the window when i go up and then i’m going to take a picture of it with earth behind me, that’s Such a beautiful photo of you and the american flag back there in your flight suit and um that’s, going to be a spectacular photo. So you know this is probably i imagine your first time down here in west texas at our launch site. Absolutely. What do you think i used to be in texas and and teach i think everything is fantastic? I mean i’ve been created so well, and the food is so great. I can’t believe it’s coming from uh. I don’t know california right right and and you’re lucky to be here with all these friends and the people and and and see what’s going on absolutely well so wally. As i said, you’ve been an inspiration to me uh. What would you say to the next generation of of young people that are out there that want to go to space? Well, i’ve talked to young people all my life.

How many of you, girls and boys want to fly? Well, not many raise their hands. I said: well i tell you what get your parents to take you out and give you a flight right, that’s what i my parents did at seven years old and if you like it, you’ll continue on and if you don’t, you might continue on because something’s going To be in your heart, that’s going to want you to do that, i cannot wait to see you go to space. Thank you for being with us it’s a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Thank you honey. So yes, as you just saw wally funk, is the real deal. I was doing my best to contain my fan girl moment there, because she again is an inspiration to so many people around the world and myself included. We see here that the astronauts are starting to ascend the crew tower there’s wally wavin she’s, leading the crew gary welcome back it’s good to have you back here at the desk to get you to help with the play by play here. We just saw a moment ago uh that they drove around the ring road stopped, took a photo because, of course, you know you got. We were gon na we’re more memorializing this moment as best we can for these astronauts they so deserve it. So going up the tower we’ve got wally, then it looks like jeff bezos, his brother mark and oliver damon that are heading up to their rocket.

Now, while we have a moment here, i do understand that caitlyn dietrich is standing by at mission control, what’s, going on outside mission control, caitlyn, hey guys, caitlin here i’m with jarrett jones, the head of our new glenn program here, uh jared, how you feeling today watching The launch here from mission control excited awesome. This is amazing, it’s, just incredible. You could only dream about this day and you know what katelyn it’s not lost on me and probably many of the viewers that today is like july to 20th the day, neil armstrong, who also graduated from my alma mater boiler up uh, stepped on the moon and Uh made history and we’re doing it at new shepard and blue origin. Doing our first human launch and it’s just amazing and the reason i’m excited, but also focus – is that there’s quite a bit of technology transfer from new shepard to new glenn everything from the be3 engine with the uh, the locks and the hydrogen. All the way down to our landing gear, i mean this is an exciting day for us and i’m just excited. I don’t want to take the uh spotlight away, it’s about new shepard and uh i’m, just very proud of this team and then blue origin as a whole. I mean just amazing, just amazing day caitlyn. Well, we like to say that new shepherd is basically the second stage of new glenn, so you’re kind of seeing the second stage fly here today.

Absolutely absolutely new shepard was built and designed for scalability and we took advantage of it in new glenn. So it’s amazing amazing feat that we’re doing and just proud to be here just glad to be here: okay, so smart, the epitome of our step by step approach, as you hear us say, and i want to pan back to mission control. We’Ve got a lot of our team here on the porch here: hey guys, Applause, Music Applause – we are so excited. We saw the astronauts fly by here just a second ago, and right in that room is some of the world’s most brilliant engineers flying this rocket today, and i don’t know about you but i’m starting to get a little bit emotional um.

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