Introduction to RSS First Step | National Air and Space Museum

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum is fortunate to care for and exhibit some of the most historically significant human spacecraft, from NASA’s Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules to the Space Shuttle discoveryand scaled composites SpaceShipOne. Soon the museum will welcome another important vehicle that represents a new way for amateur astronauts to access space.

Reusable Spacecraft (RSS) First step, Blue Origin’s autonomous, crewed suborbital spacecraft carries up to six people, including paying and sponsored passengers, from the West Texas desert to space and back. The New Shepard crew capsule launches with a reusable New Shepard booster powered by a BE-3PM engine. The crew capsule reaches a peak of over 100 kilometers, called the Kármán Line, allowing the crew and all experiments on board to experience weightlessness for three to four minutes. The 11-minute flight follows a similar profile to the 1961 Mercury-Redstone 3 mission flown by Alan Shepard (the program’s namesake). The capsule descends to Earth under parachutes while the booster autonomously navigates back to its landing site.

RSS First step is one of a cohort of privately operated spacecraft (including SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Virgin Galactic’s Virgin Space Ship). Unit) that are changing the paths to space. For the first twenty years of U.S. manned space exploration, only NASA astronauts had access to space. Although selection criteria for astronauts have changed over time, they have always favored military flight experience and advanced training in science, engineering, mathematics or medicine – career paths that have not been equally accessible to all in the past.

Beginning with the Space Shuttle program in the 1980s, the space agency opened flights to a limited number of other people, including payload specialists and special guests such as convention observers. In 2001, the US company Space Adventures began helping private individuals purchase trips to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Today, private companies provide quick access to seats to individuals who have the means to purchase a seat. Suborbital astronauts have reported paying between $250,000 and over $1 million for their spaceflights.

Since 2021 RSS First step carried 43 first-time astronauts across the Kármán Line and back to Earth. Every traveler has a deeply personal and unique reason for going to space. To these crew members, RSS First step is more than a spaceship – it’s a dream maker. And for some of them, these dreams have been cherished for a particularly long time.

Pilot, flight instructor and flight safety expert Wally Funk In 1960 she set her sights on space for the first time. She volunteered to participate in unofficial tests to assess women’s physical and psychological suitability for space travel at the Lovelace Foundation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite the outstanding performance of Funk and other participants in the privately funded Women in Space Program, NASA did not integrate women into the astronaut corps at the time, citing the urgent effort to defeat the Soviet Union to the moon. Nevertheless, Funk never gave up her dream of space travel. She sought additional training on her own, including at the US Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, in the 1990s and the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia, in the early 2000s. In July 2021, at the age of 82, Funk finally realized her dream RSS first step as a member of the NS-16 mission. Funk flew as a guest of crewmate and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos.

Ed Dwight, a retired and productive US Air Force test pilot sculptorbecame the oldest person in space in May 2024 at the age of 90. In 1963, at the request of the Kennedy White House, Dwight joined the US Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School, which was considered a pipeline to NASA’s astronaut corps. Many people expected him to become America’s first black astronaut candidate, an expectation created by NASA’s inclusion of Dwight in public affairs campaigns. Ultimately, Dwight left the Air Force in 1966, his dreams of space thwarted by a culture of exclusion. Space for Humanity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding humanity’s access to space, sponsored Dwight’s spaceflight as part of the NS-25 mission.

RSS First stepThe flights have expanded the demographics of space travel. At the age of 18, Oliver Daemen from the Netherlands became the youngest astronaut to accompany Funk and Jeff and Mark Bezos on the NS-16 mission. Karsen Kitchen, 21, a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, flew as a member of the NS-26 crew in August 2024. She became the youngest woman in space and is also the daughter of NS-20 crew member Jim Küche. Other notable “firsts” include the first astronauts from Egypt (Sara Sabry, NS-22) and Portugal (Mário Ferreira, NS-22) and the first Mexican-born woman in space (Katya Echazarreta, NS-21).

RSS first step is still in use. Even as the vehicle retires, it will continue to inspire space dreams at the National Air and Space Museum. Visitors can view RSS First step can be seen in the next issue Future in space Gallery. Until then, a full-size model of the spacecraft will be on display in the exhibition, which opens in 2026.