Mini '2001' monoliths fly into house on first flight of Blue Origin's 2nd crew ship

A small stack of miniature black slabs modeled after the monoliths within the epic “2001: A House Odyssey” have made the journey into house and again on the primary flight of Blue Origin’s second human-rated launch automobile.

The blocks, which had been flown for Spacemanic, a satellite tv for pc mission integrator, in partnership with the Croatian writer Amaranthine Books, lifted off and landed on Wednesday (Oct. 23), packed on board the New Shepard capsule “RSS Kármán Line.” Flying atop a brand new booster, the uncrewed craft and its sci-fi-inspired payload flew above the 62-mile (100 kilometers) boundary between Earth and house, which was first proposed by Hungarian-American aerospace engineer Theodore von Kármán.

“Because the pages of ‘2001: A House Odyssey’ unfold, so too does a cosmic journey that transcends the confines of Earth and literature, reaching for the celebrities in a means solely doable by means of the imaginative collaboration of Spacemanic and Amaranthine Books,” the businesses acknowledged in a launch.

The flown-in-space monolith might be faraway from the quilt of the e book so it may be displayed individually and simply remounted utilizing a magnet hidden inside. (Picture credit score: Amaranthine Books)

Launched at 11:27 a.m. EDT (1527 GMT or 10:27 a.m. CDT native time) from Blue Origin’s Launch Website One positioned close to Van Horn in West Texas, the reusable New Shepard automobile was powered by a single BE-3 engine, which fired for the primary two minutes and 20 seconds of flight earlier than reigniting after stage separation to gradual the booster to only 6 mph (9.7 kph) for an upright touchdown on its legs.

The RSS Kármán Line capsule, having coasted the remainder of means into house, accomplished its 11-minute flight underneath three parachutes for a delicate landing not removed from the place it left the bottom.

Associated: Blue Origin launches 2nd human-rated New Shepard rocket, nails touchdown (video)

Now again on Earth, the miniature 0.4-by-1.6-by-3.5-inch (1 by 4 by 9 centimeters) monoliths will every be paired with one in all solely seven, individually numbered copies of “2001: A House Odyssey: The Monolith Version,” a letterpress printed version of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, which is signed by the workforce behind the challenge. Every e book’s monolith matches into the fused-glass cowl, however might be eliminated and displayed individually as it’s held in place by a hidden magnet.

As of the launch being accomplished, all however one copy of the $10,990 Monolith Version was nonetheless out there on the market.

Along with the monoliths, the RSS Kármán Line and its booster carried 11 different payloads on the NS-27 mission, together with two totally different navigation sensors being examined for Blue Origin’s moon touchdown program, proximity operations sensors that flew as a part of a NASA TechFlights grant and tens of hundreds of student-designed postcards for Membership for the Future, Blue Origin’s STEAM (science, techniology, engineering, arts and arithmetic)-focused nonprofit group.

The RSS Kármán Line is Blue Origin’s fourth New Shepard capsule to fly, after the cargo-only “Jules Verne” and “H.G. Wells” and the human-rated “First Step.” To this point, the latter has flown 43 folks into house, together with Blue Origin’s founder Jeff Bezos, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the primary American astronaut to fly into house, Alan Shepard, for whom the Blue Origin suborbital launch system was named.

The brand new booster is Tail 5, the fifth New Shepard rocket to fly since 2015.

One of many ideas that Clarke and the 1968 movie’s director Stanley Kubrick accurately predicted was the appearance of business spaceflight. In “2001: A House Odyssey,” it’s a house airplane operated by Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) that transports passengers to and from an area station.

closeup of a rectangular gray whetstone and a pink and black paperback book

NASA astronaut Thomas Jones launched with a sharpening stone to characterize the monolith in “2001: A House Odyssey” on the house shuttle Atlantis’ STS-98 mission in February 2001. (Picture credit score: Smithsonian)

The Spacemanic monoliths are usually not the primary replicas of the “2001” monuments to fly into house. In February 2001, NASA astronaut Thomas Jones launched aboard the house shuttle Atlantis with a replica of the e book and a Sears Craftsman knife sharpening stone as a illustration of the monolith.

“My e book and miniature monolith — each veterans of a 2001 spaceflight — at the moment are within the Nationwide Air and House Museum assortment,” wrote Jones in a 2018 essay for the museum’s web site. “My STS-98 crewmates and I are gratified to have helped, in a small means, to acknowledge the significance of this landmark e book and movie. We sit up for seeing its expansive imaginative and prescient of house journey turn out to be a actuality.”