A Frenchman in space: a “crazy”, “breathtaking” experience, Sylvain recounts his extraordinary journey

Le Français évoque son expérience à bord de la navette Blue Origin. MAXPPP – Sylvain Muscio

Un entrepreneur français s’est rendu ce dimanche 19 mai 2024 pour quelques minutes dans l’espace à bord d’une fusée de l’entreprise américaine Blue Origin, un voyage qu’il a décrit comme une "expérience dingue".

The Savoyard Sylvain Chiron took off aboard the small New Shepard rocket from west Texas at 9:36 a.m. local (2:36 p.m. GMT), with five other passengers.

This mission was the first crewed mission in almost two years for Blue Origin, a company founded by multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos.

"Absolute silence"

"You take everything you imagined, multiply it roughly by 100 and you're still pretty far from reality", Sylvain Chiron, 52, told AFP a few hours after the theft. "I haven't quite returned to Earth yet."

The New Shepard rocket took off vertically and the capsule at its top detached in flight, reaching space. Then it fell, slowed by parachutes, landing in the Texan desert a little less than ten minutes after launch.

The takeoff was according to him "the most intense part": "You see the Earth moving away little by little at a completely crazy speed".

Once at the top, it's "absolute silence, you float and above all you have a breathtaking view", he described. "It’s magical, you really have the impression of being outside the world. You have the blue Earth at the bottom, your family at the bottom, and at the top a space black of incredible depth."

Selected from "thousands of applications"

Sylvain Chiron, who rejects the term space tourism, believes he was selected by Blue Origin out of "thousands of applications" thanks to a file demonstrating his "devouring passion for space".

The price of the ticket, kept secret, is "expensive" but "not completely crazy either", according to him.

A thrill-seeker, he notably founded the craft brewery in Savoie, the Brasserie du Mont-Blanc: "C’ “It’s quite incredible to be able to go into space for someone like me, who is ultimately Mr. Lambda,” Sylvain Chiron said on Sunday. "But I'm pretty sure that the next generation will have much easier access to space.&quot ;

"In my opinion, we are really at the very beginning of this space revolution", he added . "I only have one wish, and that is that as many people as possible can share this experience as quickly as possible."

Blue Origin has now taken 37 people above the Karman Line, which marks the boundary of space at an altitude of 100 kilometers according to an international convention. And only ten French astronauts have been to space, the latest of which is Thomas Pesquet.