Experience space as Jeff Bezos and William Shatner did, in Blue Origin’s rocket simulator at the Kennedy Space Centre

At the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex, in Florida, a virtual ride aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket costs only the price of admission

Equipped with VR headsets loaded with footage from real flights and a realistic interior, the simulator is enabling many to experience being an astronaut

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Astronaut trainer Barret Schlegelmilch stands in Blue Origin’s simulator of its New Shepard spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex. The attraction is expected to bring the once-exclusive sensation of space travel to “a huge range of people”. Photo: TNS

Published: 6:15pm, 12 Dec 2023

Those taking a virtual ride to space on the new Blue Origin New Shepard simulator, at the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex, face the same conundrum as the folks who can afford the real thing – don’t forget to look out of the window.

“The common thing that we’ve heard from basically every astronaut is that they had wished they had spent more time looking out the window, and less time getting out of the seat and floating around,” says Blue Origin’s Barret Schlegelmilch, whose title is Crew Member 7.

He is the person who trains the six customers at a time who take the roughly 10-minute trip up to space and back aboard the space tourism rocket operated by Jeff Bezos’ rocket company.

He was on hand last week to explain how the life-size simulator of the crew capsule works. It sits amid an array of displays and simulators from the likes of SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and others within Kennedy Space Centre (KSC)’s Gateway attraction, which is free to visitors with paid admission to the centre in Florida, in the United States.

A mock-up of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner space capsule at the Kennedy Space Centre visitor complex. Photo: Kennedy Space Centre

The simulator opened recently alongside a special box for people to participate in the Postcards to Space programme run by Blue Origin’s not-for-profit Club for the Future. Guests can drop in a postcard to be flown on a future New Shepard flight that will be sent back to them in the mail.