The 74-year-old daughter of Alan Shepard brought along some golf balls, just like her father did. The flight by Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company lasted just over 10 minutes.
Laura Shepard Churchley flew as a guest of Blue OriginImage: Blue Origin/ZUMA Wire/imago images
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The daughter of pioneering US astronaut Alan Shepard blasted off into space on Saturday aboard Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin commercial space tourism rocket.
Laura Shepard Churchley, 74, was only a schoolgirl when her father became the first US astornaut to travel to space in 1961 in a 10-minute suborbital flight as one of NASA's original "Mercury Seven" astronauts.
Shepard Churchley was one of six passengers aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft as it lifted off from a launch site outside the west Texas town of Van Horn.
The group of six blasted off into space aboard the Blue Origin commercial space tourism rocket for just over 10 minutes Image: Blue Origin/AP/dpa/picture alliance
Michael Strahan, a retired National Football League star and co-anchor of ABC television's "Good Morning America" show, was also on board.
Also buckled in were four paying customers: space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess and Cameron Bess. The Besses made history as the first parent-child pair to fly in space together, according to Blue Origin.
The automated capsule soared to an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers), providing a few minutes of weightlessness at the very apex of the suborbital flight before parachuting into the desert for a gentle landing. The booster also came back to land successfully.
Space tourism: Out of reach for most Earthlings
Space tourism began in 2001 with Italian-American millionaire Dennis Tito. Decades later, it's still a preserve of the rich and essentially white.
Image: Joe Skipper/REUTERS
An unbeatable record
Dennis Tito was and always will be the first civilian to travel to space. Tito had been a NASA engineer before turning to finance. He had always dreamed of a trip to space and is said to have paid $20 million to have his dream come true. It was hard convincing the big space agencies, but on April 28, 2001, Tito took a ride on a Soyuz rocket and spent six days at the International Space Station.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
In second place: Mark Shuttleworth
So, the name's fitting — shuttle-worth. But beyond that you'll quickly see a bias emerge. The first space tourists were all nerdy engineers… and all but one were MEN. South African Mark Shuttleworth, an internet and software engineer, flew a year after Tito and is celebrated as the first African in space. We're still waiting for the first Black African to make it — not for want of trying, though.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/M. Grachyev
Afronaut: Mandla Maseko
There's never been a Black African astronaut, neither agency-based nor a tourist. Mandla Maseko, a DJ from a township in Pretoria, South Africa, was due to be the first "Afronaut" until he died in a road accident at the age of 30. Maseko had won his chance through a private venture called Ace Apollo Space Academy. Seen as an inspirational figure, he said: "Defy gravity in everything that you do."
Image: Themba Hadebe/AP Photo/picture alliance
Third: Gregory Olsen
The third "official" space tourist was millionaire scientist Gregory Olsen. As Tito and Shuttleworth before him, Olsen bought his ticket through a company called Space Adventures and flew on a Russian Soyuz rocket. Olsen sold his own company, Sensors Unlimited, which under new owners Collins Aerospace is a NASA contractor, to pay his way. And he says he'd sell another firm to do it all again.
Image: Ivan Sekretarev/AP Photo/picture alliance
Fourth: Anousheh Ansari
So, it's not only boys who dream of the stars. Anousheh Ansari dreamed of space as a child as well. An engineer, internet technologist and co-founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, Ansari spent 11 days in space in 2006. She is described as the first astronaut of Iranian descent and the first Muslim woman in space. Her foundation champions itself as having "ignited a new era for commercial spaceflight."
Image: picture-alliance/Everett Collection
Science tourist: Helen Sharman
In 1991, Helen Sharman became the UK's first astronaut. Sharman conducted scientific experiments on the Soviet/Russian space station Mir, so hers was a mission in the traditional sense. We're including Sharman because her mission started as a commercial venture, but the company failed. The Soviets, whose idea it was anyway, paid in an act of bettering relations between them and the West.
Image: Alexander Mokletsov/dpa/Sputnik/picture alliance
The man who went twice: Charles Simonyi
Charles Simonyi is the first space tourist to have taken two trips. The billionaire software engineer first flew in 2007 and then again in 2009. But Simonyi holds other records, too. At the age of 13, he was selected as a junior astronaut in his native Hungary, and he developed the world's first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editor, Bravo. He thinks humans will live in space one day.
Image: Mikhail Metzel/picture-alliance/dpa
Not just gaming around: Richard Garriott
British-American Richard Garriott (left) had an early interest in space travel due to the fact that his dad, Owen, was a NASA astronaut. Family friends and neighbors were astronauts, too. But he became a computer games developer and that's how he paid for his trip in 2008 — but he was also an investor in the space tourism company, Space Adventures. He's known to dress up as a medieval knight.
Image: AP
From circus of the sun to the stars: Guy Laliberte
A native of Quebec, Guy Laliberte is the original creative mind behind the world-famous circus company, Cirque du Soleil ("Circus of the Sun"). He spent 10 days at the International Space Station in 2009 and is the last of the old-school space tourists. Following Laliberte's trip, no tourists flew for over a decade. This shot of a Soyuz capsule returning to Earth was almost the end of it. Until…
Image: AP/NASA/BILL INGALLS
Richard Branson rears his head
Boys and their toys: Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson just had to pip Amazon-man Jeff Bezos at the post. His reward? The US Federal Aviation Administration grounded Branson's SpaceShipTwo for deviating from its flight path as it descended from the edge of space on July 11, 2021. Got to hand it to Branson, though — he's been at it for decades. SpaceShipOne won the Ansari XPRIZE in 2004.
Image: Andres Leighton/AP Photo/picture alliance
Just another dreamer: Jeff Bezos
Branson and Bezos (in hat) are competitors. They're also in a private space travel clique with common goals and would get nowhere without each other — or early test pilots Brian Binnie and Mike Melvill and investors like Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen or Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Space Adventures and XPRIZE. On July 20, 2021, Bezos and three others took a suborbital flight. Will you be next?
Image: Blue Origin/Anadolu Agency/picture alliance
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Shepard Churchley, who heads the board of trustees for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, took along a tiny piece of her father's Freedom 7 capsule as well as mementos from his Apollo 14 moonshot.
She also brought some golf balls — her father had famously hit two golf galls on the lunar surface as commander of the Apollo 14 Mission.
"I thought about Daddy coming down and thought, gosh he didn't even get to enjoy any of what I'm getting to enjoy," Shepard Churchley said following touchdown. "He was working. He had to do it himself. I went up for the ride!"
After emerging from the capsule, Strahan said, "It was unreal," adding that he wants to go again. Bezoz, however, joked he would have to buy his own ticket next time.