FirstFT: Bezos successfully completes space flight

Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder-turned-private space entrepreneur and philanthropist, reached the lower reaches of space over the West Texas desert early on Tuesday, fulfilling a boyhood dream and ending a long series of delays for his private space company.

The world’s richest man and three others were propelled to a height of 107km, 7km above the internationally recognised boundary of space, in a 60ft rocket built by Blue Origin.

They experienced about three minutes of weightlessness and views of the Earth through giant portholes the company had called the “largest windows in space” before their capsule drifted back to the desert for a soft landing under three parachutes.

Bezos, who has faced criticism for spending billions of dollars on his personal jaunt into space, dismissed claims that he was turning his back on more serious issues. Blue Origin was set up to “build a road to space” that would take pressure off terrestrial development, he said after the flight. “We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth. This is not about escaping Earth.”

He also thanked “every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this”.

Bezos has said that development in space will eventually ease the burdens on the planet, claiming: “All polluting industry will move off Earth, and Earth will end up zoned residential.”

The launch marks the first for a paying passenger on a rocket to be entirely developed and operated by a private company. Oliver Daemen, 18, the son of a Dutch hedge fund manager, was given a last-minute place on the flight after the unnamed winner of an auction for the seat cried off because of what the company called a “scheduling conflict”.

“This is a big moment for commercial space, it’s hugely significant,” said Greg Autry, a former White House liaison to Nasa.

Besides signalling the beginning of suborbital space tourism, the flight had shown that Blue Origin had perfected technologies that would power far more ambitious launches in future, Autry added.

Five more stories in the news

1. Wall Street stocks bounce back after Delta-fuelled retreat Wall Street stock markets clawed back losses from a global rout a day earlier as investors shrugged off caution over the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant to focus instead on economic growth.

2. Trump ally Tom Barrack charged with illegally acting as UAE agent The former chief executive of Colony Capital, who was one of Donald Trump’s earliest supporters in the 2016 presidential campaign, has been arrested and charged with illegally acting as an agent of the United Arab Emirates.

3. China hits back at US-led accusations over cyber attacks China has challenged US-led accusations that Beijing was at the heart of a wave of global cyber attacks, including an offensive against a Microsoft email application that affected tens of thousands of organisations. The White House and its western allies on Monday accused Beijing of teaming up with criminal gangs to commit widespread cyber attacks.

4. Italian blood samples revive debate over first signs of Covid in Europe Renewed tests of blood samples collected in Italy as early as October 2019 have revived a debate over whether coronavirus was circulating in Europe before Chinese authorities confirmed the first case in Wuhan.

5. China must cut emissions to avoid climate ‘chaos’, warns US envoy Kerry Beijing must cut emissions this decade if the planet is to avoid climate “chaos”, warned US climate envoy John Kerry, as he issued a stark assessment that the world was falling short on its climate pledges.

• Read More Climate change has definitely arrived in China. Unseasonably high temperatures over 35C have contributed to its worst power shortage in a decade. For local power companies, that spells trouble.

Coronavirus digest

• China’s commitment to achieving zero Covid-19 cases means most of its citizens will probably be cut off from the outside world until the year-end or even part way through 2022, according to analysts.

• Covid cases in Myanmar have more than doubled every week in recent weeks, and the situation is particularly lethal because of public mistrust in the military regime, which has attacked, jailed or killed scores of health workers for opposing its seizure of power.

• An estimated two-thirds of people in India have Covid-19 antibodies, according to a new government survey.

• US health officials on Tuesday said the Delta variant accounts for more than 80 per cent of new coronavirus cases in the country.

• Indonesia is extending distancing measures implemented at the beginning of the month in an effort to contain a severe Covid-19 wave.

Follow our live coronavirus blog and sign up for our Coronavirus Business Update newsletter for more Covid-19 news.

The day ahead

Brexit briefing Britain’s Brexit minister David Frost will today address parliament on the Northern Ireland Protocol, which he says creates too much burden on business and retards trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Northern Irish industry groups say the protocol can, and must, be made to work, even if it is causing serious disruption.

Earnings Johnson & Johnson, which is part of a proposed $26bn settlement to resolve claims that it helped fuel the opioid crisis, releases second-quarter results today. The group last month agreed to a $230m settlement with the state of New York to settle such claims.

Also reporting earnings are Coca-Cola, Dutch chip equipment supplier ASML, which recently earned top billing as a climate leader by MSCI, telecoms operator Verizon, and software and services provider SAP.

What else we’re reading

‘There are possibilities everywhere’ A profound shift is under way in the US labour market. American employers have historically been able to dictate terms to their workers but now companies are desperate to hire staff as continuing fears about the pandemic, a lack of childcare and a temporary expansion of unemployment benefits have kept many workers on the sidelines. People looking for work hold more bargaining power with prospective employers than they have in decades.

Brussels warns Poland to comply with EU court rulings or face fines The European Commission has warned Warsaw it could face financial sanctions if it fails to comply with two decisions by the European Court of Justice over judicial independence.

We can no longer say floods are an act of God Western citizens have come to think of floods as happening elsewhere. At their worst, they happen in the developing world. But the city, a fortress of tarmac and concrete, a marvel of modern civil engineering, has left us with a false sense of security. That dam might be about to burst, writes Joy Lo Dico.

New York City parties like there’s no more Covid On July 4, an Independence Day party was in full swing on the rolling greens of the Apawamis Country Club golf course just north of New York City. Hundreds of club members and their guests of every age — families with young children and teenagers, elderly grandparents, recent retirees — had all come out in a packed celebration, writes Renée Kaplan.

Why Gabon wants markets to help tackle climate change As oil reserves dwindle, Gabon is seeking to reposition itself as a “green superpower”. The rare high-income country in Africa wants recognition for preserving its tropical forests, the planet’s most important forest ecosystem after the Amazon. So how does it plan on gaining “natural capital”?

• Keep reading Drought puts Amazon rainforest at risk of ‘large-scale dieback’, researchers warn. A new study found that 2.5bn trees perished in the biome following a drought several years ago.

Fashion

When it comes to summer suits, creased is the word Like so many things, the summer suit is heading for reinvention in the shape of separates, updated seersucker, finally learning to love the creasing of linen and, if in doubt, paired with plimsolls. Nicholas Foulkes explains how men are embracing the post-lockdown art of casual dressing up.