It’s the big day for Sylvain Chiron. This 52-year-old French entrepreneur is due to fly into space this Sunday aboard a rocket from the American company Blue Origin, for which it will be the first crewed flight in almost two years.
A total of six passengers are scheduled to take off from West Texas aboard the small New Shepard rocket from Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. As Sylvain Chiron indicated at Dauphiné Libéré A few weeks ago, takeoff was postponed several times. The shooting window will finally open this Sunday at 8:30 a.m. local (3:30 p.m. in Paris)(1).
The price of the ticket kept secret
“I’m going to live my childhood dream,” Sylvain Chiron, the founder of the Brasserie du Mont-Blanc, confided this week. “I was immersed in aeronautics quite young. I really wanted to become an astronaut. »
Sylvain Chiron is on the far right in the photo.
This thrill-seeking Savoyard arrived on Thursday at the Launch site one site, the Blue Origin base in the middle of the Texan desert. Aviation enthusiast – he obtained his private pilot’s license at age 16 – Sylvain Chiron is now looking forward to being able to “see the Earth as a whole, from above, without borders, with all its fragility and beauty”.
Blue Origin flights only last around ten minutes but allow passengers to admire the curvature of the Earth and to float briefly in the capsule. According to Sylvain Chiron, Blue Origin received “thousands of applications”. He believes he was selected thanks to an application demonstrating his “devouring passion for space”.
The ticket price is kept secret. “Yes, it’s expensive” but “not completely crazy either,” the Frenchman simply indicated.
The mission is not without risk
The company has already taken 31 people above the Karman line, which marks the boundary of space at an altitude of 100 km according to an international convention. The opportunity is extremely rare: only ten French astronauts have been to space, the latest of which is Thomas Pesquet – her second mission, the most recent, dates from 2021. In 2023, the Franco-Italian Ketty Maisonrouge flew with a company competing with Blue Origin in this niche of short flights, Virgin Galactic.
In space at 90
Among the other passengers is Ed Dwight, born in 1933 and who had been tipped to become the first African-American to go to space, but ultimately never had the opportunity. Ed Dwight subsequently became a sculptor and his work, exhibited in museums, highlights African-American history and personalities.
At 90 years old, he must become this Sunday the oldest person to have reached space, beating by only a few months the actor who played the emblematic Captain Kirk in the series Star Trek, William Shatner. The latter also flew at the age of 90 aboard the Blue Origin rocket. Jeff Bezos himself participated in the first manned flight of the machine, in July 2021.
This Sunday’s mission, named NS-25, will be the first crewed flight of the New Shepard rocket since August 2022. In September of the same year, a flight without a human on board ended in the crash of the stage rocket propulsion.
The automatic capsule ejection system – where the passengers are during a manned flight –, was triggered and she fell to the ground, slowed by her parachutes. After an investigation by the American aviation regulator (FAA), Blue Origin made modifications and carried out a new uncrewed flight in December 2023.
A “childhood dream” come true
Sylvain Chiron concedes that the adventure is “not completely devoid of risk”. “That being said, you have to know how to overcome your fears if you want to do things in life,” he said. This risk is one of the reasons why he rejects the term “space tourism”, which according to him rather evokes the image of “a cruise” with “a pina colada”.
Today he hopes to become a Source of “inspiration for young people”, in order to show them that “we must not give up. You have to chase your dreams and with a little luck, you can live them.”
(1) The NS-25 mission in which Sylvain Chiron is taking part can be followed live from the Blue Origin website.
