Take a virtual ride on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex

Those taking a virtual ride to space on the new Blue Origin New Shepard simulator at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex on Merritt Island, Florida, face the same challenge as the folks who can afford the real thing — remembering to look out the window.

“The common thing that we’ve heard from basically every astronaut is that they had wished they had spent more time looking out the window, and less time getting out of the seat and floating around,” said Blue Origin’s Barret Schlegelmilch, who trains the six customers who take the real-life trip up to space and back aboard Jeff Bezos’ rocket company’s space tourism rocket.

Referring to the simulator, which is free to visitors with paid admission, Schlegelmilch said, “The way it works is you go inside, you sit in the seats which are identical to our actual flight seats. Everything you can see and touch in there is basically identical to the real thing.”

Unlike the real thing, visitors to the Kennedy Space Center won’t be getting out of their seats. But they will be distracted during what is a sped-up, four-minute experience wearing VR headsets, especially by the digital zero-gravity indicators that appear on-screen.

Those indicators — little floating objects astronauts take into space to let them know it’s “floating time” — have ranged from Legos to a football taken up by NFL Hall of Famer and “Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan when he took the trip in 2021.

On the simulator, riders get to choose from among a mini Saturn V rocket, a space shuttle, a crew capsule and a tennis ball. And when the time comes, the simulator makes them appear as if they are floating.

The virtual reality headsets are loaded with images taken with 360-degree cameras from previous flights of New Shepard, which launches from Blue Origin’s West Texas facility. The rocket has flown 23 times but has not taken flight since September 2022, when an uncrewed version of the rocket suffered a malfunctioning booster at liftoff.

The incident forced the Federal Aviation Administration to ground the rocket for more than a year as Blue Origin concluded its investigation and enacted a series of fixes to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. It affected only the uncrewed version of New Shepard, while the capsule and booster that was used for human spaceflights remained intact.

Before the malfunction, New Shepard had flown six successful crewed flights taking up 31 people. Passengers have included Bezos, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American in space, for whom the rocket is named.

While millionaires will continue to be the primary customer base for Blue Origin, the simulator opens up the experience to the masses, Schlegelmilch said.

“It’s super exciting to be able to bring an experience like this to a huge range of people who otherwise would have never maybe got a chance to see that,” he said.