Michael Strahan received his astronaut wings on Saturday (December 13), and his “Good Morning America” co-anchors covered the epic event.
Co-anchors Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes admitted that they had more nerves than Strahan throughout his journey.
Michael Strahan, Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, the first American to reach space (1961), and four paying customers (price undisclosed) all spent a few minutes in space aboard Blue Origin LLC’s reusable New Shepard rocket.
The rocket took off from a launchpad in West Texas and traveled approximately 62 miles above Earth, past the Karman line, an internationally recognized boundary for space.
Strahan said the trip was almost like an out-of-body experience, and it’s hard to even believe it happened.
It’s almost like an out of body experience.
It’s hard to even believe it happened, and it’s such a… the feeling of almost being completely out of control.
You completely trust… your life is in the hands of other people who you deem smarter than you… Know exactly what’s going to happen at certain points at how to take you up and bring you down safely, and they couldn’t have been better here.
It was fantastic!
But, it’s a crazy feeling, like the feeling of weightlessness, the feeling when the booster goes off, the rocket goes off, and it detaches and you don’t know what’s up from down.
And your body just goes like this. (Opens his arm in a relaxed manner)
And you take off your seatbelt, but naturally it feels natural to move, in Zero-Gs.
But if you swim you don’t go anywhere. You actually have to push off things and touch things very gently, but it feels very natural.
And, to see the curvature, the atmosphere, blue, the earth, just… it was too short.
The trip was too short.
Watch the GMA coverage below:
This marked the third trip into space this year for Blue Origin LLC, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Michael Strahan is an NFL Hall of Famer, a two-time Daytime Emmy winner, a game show host, an GMA anchor, a Fox NFL analyst, and now he can add astronaut to his resume.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
