Technology & Science
Blue Origin’s 16th Crewed New Shepard Flight Sends First Wheelchair User Past Kármán Line
On 20 Dec 2025 Blue Origin’s New Shepard carried ESA engineer Michaela Benthaus—the world’s first wheelchair user in space—on a 10-minute, 105-km suborbital hop, closing the program’s 37th mission.
Focusing Facts
- Launch occurred 20 Dec 2025 at 14:15 GMT from Van Horn, Texas, reaching ~105 km (65 mi) altitude with six passengers.
- Benthaus, 33, became the 87th individual and first paraplegic to cross the internationally-recognized 100 km space boundary.
- New Shepard has now flown 92 human seats across 16 crewed flights and 37 total missions since 2015.
Context
In 1961 Alan Shepard’s 15-minute Mercury flight proved a single human could ride a ballistic arc into space; six decades later Blue Origin’s namesake rocket repeats the profile but with an accessibility twist, echoing moments like 1983’s Sally Ride flight that unlocked doors for women or 1998’s John Glenn return that showed age needn’t be a barrier. Benthaus’ journey fits two larger arcs: the privatization of sub-orbital flight (Bezos, Branson, Musk replacing Cold-War states) and the century-long push for disability inclusion begun with World War I veterans and codified in laws like the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. Technically, the mission changes little—no new altitude record, no novel science—but symbolically it chips away at an implicit assumption that off-planet life is only for the able-bodied elite. If commercial spaceflight follows aviation’s trajectory—from $20,000 trans-Atlantic tickets in 1930 to budget airlines today—mass access may arrive by 2125; ensuring design-for-all now could shape extraterrestrial habitats for centuries. Conversely, if space tourism stalls under cost, carbon scrutiny, and safety incidents, this milestone may linger as an inspiring footnote rather than a turning point. Either way, it forces the industry—and society—to confront who is envisioned in humanity’s off-world future.
Perspectives
Space industry news outlets
e.g., SpaceWatch.Global — Present the flight chiefly as New Shepard’s 37th successful mission, underscoring Blue Origin’s growing launch tally rather than the accessibility milestone. Industry-aligned coverage is boosterish toward commercial space companies, offering little scrutiny of ticket prices, environmental impact, or inclusivity claims that could complicate the success narrative.
Mainstream global and regional news outlets
e.g., Gulf Daily News Online, 7 News Miami, The Weather Channel, Arab News, Saudi Gazette — Frame the event as an inspirational first for disability inclusion, stressing that Benthaus ‘proved space is for everyone’ through a feel-good human-interest story. Heavy reliance on Blue Origin press material and Associated Press copy leads them to gloss over the high cost of seats and broader debates about inequality or climate effects of space tourism.
Outlets noting critiques of billionaire space tourism
e.g., AOL.com, The New York Times — While celebrating the milestone, they spotlight unanswered questions about ticket costs, pollution and the perception that sub-orbital hops are a pastime for the ultra-rich, quoting Benthaus’s defense of the flight. By highlighting controversy they attract reader attention, yet the pieces still depend on company-supplied details, so the criticism remains mild and may serve more as balance than deep investigation.