Frisco

Dude Perfect Co-Founder Among Six on Blue Origin Rocket That Blasted Off Thursday

The Blue Origin NS-22 successfully launched from West Texas

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket launched Thursday from the launch site located near Van Horn, Texas, sending the capsule on a 10-minute flight with crew members on board.

The company's sixth human flight included Dude Perfect co-founder Coby Cotton from Frisco, Portuguese entrepreneur Mario Ferreira, British-American mountaineer Vanessa O'Brien, technology leader Clint Kelly III, Egyptian engineer Sara Sabry, and telecommunications executive Steve Young.

A few minutes after launch the space tourists experienced zero-gravity and Frisco-based Dude Perfect tweeted "Coby is officially an astronaut!" as the space capsule reached the edge of space.

NS-22's booster touched down first at the North Landing Pad around 7 minutes after launch.

A short time later the parachutes deployed on the Reusable Space Ship, called RSS First Step, carrying the six space tourists and the capsule landed in the West Texas desert.

The flight comes as Blue Origin competes with Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic for space tourism dollars.

The crew of NS-22 will take postcards to space with them.

New Shepard is named after Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

The company is working in Cape Canaveral on a larger orbital-class rocket, named New Glenn after the first American to orbit the world, John Glenn.

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