Page 2 - Shepherd Rocket News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Near van horn, lindsey riser in our own mission control with a closer look at the new shepherd rocket, dr. may gemson, a former nasa astronaut and the first black woman in space and back with us, leroy chiou the former commander of the international space station, and garrett riseman and dr. jose hernandez. >> let's start with tom, good morning, tom, do we know anything about this delay, why the delay? >> reporter: hang on one second. i'm going to give you an answer. it looks like the -- it looks like we've resumed the countdown, guys. so they were going through the checklist, pardon me for li...

Origin will blast off for its second manned flight. it comes just months after it launched bezos himself into space as part of its inaugural crew in july. today, science fiction is actually going to become reality when captain kirk himself, actor william shatner will become the oldest person to fly to space at the age of 90. that tops legendary astronaut wally funk who flew on blue origin's first mission at age 82. let's talk about what's about to happen in the next couple of hours. the crew of four will board the shepherd rocket for their 11-minute flight, and that's when they launch. after l...

Little picture, paint us a picture of what is going to happen in just over 42 minutes. >> reporter: we want to give you guys an intimate look of what they're going to experience up there, but also more about this spacecraft. let's go ahead and give you some fast facts first. we're talking about blue origin's new shepherd. this is its 18th mission to space. its second crewed mission. this spacecraft is designed to fly autonomously. it could hold six people, four are going to be on board today, of those four none of them are pilots. let's dive into the components here of new shepherd. of course ...

We take for granted all the materials. all of those things exist, and there is a robust program in space exploration about how do we ensure that the benefits -- the things that we learned, that space technologies come to us here on earth. and so i think we have to separate out this particular tourist ride from what space exploration has done and still has the potential to do even more. >> what an important distinction, as we see the astronauts climbing up those stairs, heading up to the capsule. tom costello, talk to me about the actual rocket that they're going to be sitting on top of. >> yea...

Suddenly it goes out of sight. there's that sense of panic, but you know, when you speak to anyone on the blue origin team, i spoke to mark bezos who was part of the mission over the summer in the last few days who said this is all about safety, safety, safety. audry powers is going to be part of this mission. she joined blue origin in 2013. she is in charge of this rocket, of specifically land operations. so for those who are saying, oh, my gosh, captain kirk, is she going to be safe? safety does seem to be their top mission. also ahead this hour, the new change at our borders that could im...