'Road to space': billionaire Bezos has successful suborbital jaunt

Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, soared some 66.5 miles above the Texas desert aboard his company Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle on Tuesday and returned safely to Earth, a historic suborbital flight that helps usher in a new era of space tourism. "Best day ever," Bezos, accompanied by three crewmates including the world's oldest and youngest space travelers, said after his capsule descended with three large parachutes and touched down, kicking up a cloud of dust. The 57-year-old American billionaire, donning a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, took a trip to the edge of space lasting 10 minutes and 10 seconds. "Astronaut Bezos in my seat - happy, happy, happy," Bezos told mission control during a safety check after the passengers buckled back in following a few minutes of weightlessness in space. The fully autonomous 60-foot-tall gleaming white spacecraft, with a feather design on its side, ignited its BE-3 engine for a vertical liftoff from Blue Origin's Launch Site One facility about 20 miles outside the rural town of Van Horn under mostly clear skies. The flight came nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism venture Virgin Galactic's successful inaugural suborbital flight from New Mexico. The two flights give credibility and inject enthusiasm into the fledgling commercial space tourism industry, which Swiss bank UBS estimates will be worth $3b annually in a decade.<br/>