In a space-age milestone, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launched a wheelchair-using engineer and handicap advocate to the edge of space Saturday, a 10-minute trip that allowed her to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness more than 65 miles above Earth.Michaela Benthaus, a German aerospace engineer who suffered a spinal cord injury in a 2018 mountain biking accident, joined a retired SpaceX manager and four entrepreneurs for the up-and-down flight to a point just above the so-called “boundary” of space.”It was the coolest experience!” she said after landing, joking about turning upside down in weightlessness. “I didn’t only like the view and the microgravity, but I also liked the going up. That was so cool, every stage of going up.”German aerospace engineer and handicap advocate Michaela Benthaus greets well wishers and Blue Origin support personnel moments after being carried from the New Shepard spacecraft. / Credit: Blue Origin webcastBenthaus was assisted during training and inside the Blue Origin capsule by Hans Koenigsmann, a former SpaceX manager and engineer who was instrumental in the development of that company’s workhorse Falcon family of rockets.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA fellow German by birth and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Koenigsmann helped arrange Benthaus’ flight after meeting her last year.”I met Hans the first time online,” Benthaus said in a Blue Origin interview. “I just asked him, like, you know, you worked for so long for SpaceX, do you think that people like me can be astronauts?”Then he reached out to Blue Origin and told me oh, Blue actually is very excited about it. Okay, I have my doubts on it, but let’s see. Thankfully it turned out we can do it. So Hans and me (ended) up flying as a te …
