Ep. 263 | Allie Kuehner and Sarah Phelps: Designing the Astronaut Experience: Turning a Half-Million-Dollar, 11-Minute Thrill Ride Into a Moment of Awe

Speaker A: Welcome to Customer Confidential. I'm Rob Markey.

Speaker B: You're going faster than a speeding bullet. You go through three GS, but you don't even feel the three GS because there's so much else going on. You're looking out the window, it's so loud. And then all of a sudden, the rocket and the capsule dislodge from one another and it goes to perfect silence.

Speaker A: That's Allie Keener, an astronaut on Blue new Shepard Flight NS33. She's one of only about 100 humans ever to cross the Karman Line. It's a journey that lasts barely 11 minutes from liftoff to touchdown. But turning those 11 minutes into a once in a lifetime experience, well, that job used to belong to Sarah Phelps, Blue Origin's managing director of astronaut and customer experience.

Speaker C: We're giving people an opportunity to go up 62 miles above, um, the Earth. And you know that somehow, some way, that experience is going to change you and it's going to change how you see the world moving forward. And so for me it's, how do we build an experience around that? How do we make that 11 minutes even more?

Speaker A: On today's episode, which we recorded in 2025, we explore how Ali's once in a lifetime ride in June of that year, along with Sarah's meticulous design, turn a few heart pounding minutes into an experience that customers rave about for the rest of their lives. And what any company can borrow from their flightbook.

Speaker B: I'm Allie Keener and I was an astronaut on blue origin flight NS33.

Speaker C: My name is Sarah Phelps and I am the managing director of astronaut and customer experience for Blue Origin.

Speaker D: That is super cool. Welcome. For those who don't know what Blue Origin is, do you want to just give the 2 second thumbnail on what the company is and then we'll go from there?

Speaker C: Sure. Blue Origin is a spaceflight company that is focused on, uh, building a road to space for the benefit of Earth. We have multiple vehicles. A suborbital vehicle in New shepherd and an orbital vehicle in New Glenn focused on getting to space, making space, democratizing space. And part, uh, of that is flying people.

Speaker B: Do you want me to go through, like sitting on the rocket and going up?

Speaker D: Yeah, I want to hear it all. Like I'm, you know, I'm going to live, I'm not going to get to go do this. So I'm living vicariously. Allie, I want to hear the whole thing.

Speaker A: Like, how far in advance of the actual flight had you made this decision

Speaker B: it was about a month.

Speaker A: A month? A month between the time you made the decision and you're sitting on the launch pad.

Speaker B: That's absolutely correct.

Speaker D: Oh my goodness. I had no idea.

Speaker B: So we meet our crew, right? You're a crew of six and it's just us. There's no one driving the capsule.

Speaker A: And where do you meet, like, where do you first meet the other crew members?

Speaker B: On a Zoom call about five days before we actually meet in Van Horn, Texas is where this all happens. And you go through two days of training, around 10 hour days. The blue origin team is the scientists, the engineers, the astronauts. Like, they're all incredible. They're all adventurous in their own right.

Speaker A: How many, how many of you?

Speaker D: There's seven astronauts total. Six astronauts.

Speaker B: And, um, we were an eclectic bunch. I say, I say we were like the Mighty Ducks. And we had nothing in common really, except that we were going to space together. So we went through the training. Then you get on the rocket and they lock you in. And you're sitting on this rocket in these customized seats. And it starts at 30 minutes and it counts down. We're all, um, can hear everything happening on headset. I actually wore something, it was called a biometric button. And I wore it on my chest from the day that I got there until the day that I left.

Speaker D: Oh, interesting.

Speaker B: And it was monitoring all my vitals for science research. My button probably had a few moments where my heart rate ran up.

Speaker C: I'll tell you those moments.

Speaker B: Uh, when I first stepped into the capsule, I think my heart rate went up a little bit. And then you get in your seats, they lock you in. And the blue origin team has to go about two miles away for safety reasons to watch the launch. And so now you're sitting there on this rocket starting at 30 minutes, counting down, and it gets to about, you know, five minute. And we had a hold, and then it gets to about three minutes and we have a hold. And then, uh, one minute and it held, but then it started counting down. And so now you hear the roar of the engines. The capsule becomes illuminated in like this orange fiery glow from the, uh, fire from the engine. And it actually takes about seven seconds before you start moving. So that seven seconds, you just feel your heart pounding out of your chest.

Speaker A: Oh, I bet.

Speaker B: And then you start to move and it feels slowly, I would say one of the most surprising things to me was the ascent, how beautifully slow it felt. And you're moving vertically and you're also slightly rotating and you start to see the ground beneath you. Get further away, and then you can make out land masses. And then before you know it, you're soaring through the clouds. It's a complete sensory experience, and you're going faster than a speeding bullet. You go through three GS, but you don't even feel the three GS because there's so much, you know, else going on. You're looking out the window, it's so loud, and you're kind of horizontal at this point because you're kind of, like, laid back in your chair looking out the window, so your view this entire time has been horizontal. And then all of a sudden, the rocket and the capsule dislodge from one another, and it goes to perfect silence.

Speaker A: Whoa.

Speaker B: Perfect silence. And now, not only do you have this beautiful silence, but you're. I'm levitating in my seatbelt. I, uh, can unclip my harness, and for the first time, I get to tip forward and look out the window. And these windows are incredible. They make up one third the surface area of the capsule. And so, for the first time, I now get to look out the window and look down at Earth.

Speaker A: That seems crazy, by the way, that they make up that much of the. From a design perspective, I'm like, whoa.

Speaker B: M. It's really well designed, and it gives you so, such a great view out at space and the Earth itself. And I think what Blue Origin does so well is the capsule for the training. You're inside. So, like, the first time you really get to look out the windows and see Earth is the first time. Like, you're not training outside in, like, a landscape, looking at, you know, the beautiful landscape around you. The first time you get to look out these windows down at Earth, and. And you just see, like, this delicate, finite, beautiful planet. And, you know, in that moment, you just realize how connected we all are. And then beyond that, you see this limb of the Earth.

Speaker D: What is limb of the Earth?

Speaker A: What does that mean?

Speaker B: So that's, like, the curvature of the Earth, and it's that bright, old blue color, and it's. You see how thin the atmosphere is. And it's illuminated even more so by this stark, stark vastness, blackness of space. You realize, like, wow, there is nothing else out there. Like, it is just us. Uh, we all need to come together. We need to protect this planet. Seeing that limit, the Earth like that will be forever in my mind. The color, no picture, you know, will ever do it justice.

Speaker A: How when you're in this moment, I mean, I'm imagining myself thinking, how do I burn this into my memory and

Speaker D: save it and keep it and, uh,

Speaker A: not let it fade. Right?

Speaker B: No, I mean, you just try and hold on to the moment. You know, it's joy. It's pure childlike joy to be suspicious, bended, floating like that, you feel both infinite and small at the same time. Like seeing our planet without borders, just one shared home. It just filled me with a deep sense of connection and responsibility.

Speaker D: I absolutely love that. Sarah, let's transition to your role. Um, you are responsible for the experience of the astronauts. And when I first met you, when I first heard about this, my initial thought was, okay, wait a minute, this thing is an 11 minute flight. It's basically a half million dollar roller coaster ride. How the heck do you create a, uh, meaningful and memorable experience out of that? Because at the end of the day, like, if you really boil this all down, it's by and large people paying, uh, a fee to sit in a seat and get launched into space and come back. It literally start to finish, from launchpad to, what is it? Splashdown, 11 minutes. So, like, when you first heard about this and you hadn't even begun to

Speaker A: think about working for the company, how

Speaker D: do you even conceptualize turning that into something meaningful? Uh, to me, you almost have an impossible challenge because that's the product you're working with. And so, so yeah, it's, it's, there's this sort of dream of going into space, but it's almost like, so what? Like, why is that a big deal?

Speaker C: Right? Number one, it's something that not very many people have ever seen. And so now we're giving people an opportunity to see something that you, you cannot see. And there are so few things in the world that are a surprise. And here you have this opportunity to go, to leave Earth's gravity, to go up 62 miles above the Earth, to look down and to see the curvature of the Earth, to see the blackness of space. And you know that somehow, some way, that experience is going to change you and it's going to change how you see the world moving forward. And so for me, it's, how do we build an experience around that? How do we make that 11 minutes even more so.

Speaker D: So let me, let me, I want to put a pin in the. It's 11 minutes and it, and it's like a roller coaster. I'm still, I'm still stuck on that, but I want to actually. So now let's think a little bit about conceptualizing. All right? How do you build something around that 11 minutes that makes it Much more meaningful. And I'm wondering where you started when you took on that challenge. Like, you have a clean. You have a white sheet of paper.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: No one's ever done it before. What are your anchors like? How do you even get started on the process of figuring out what that experience should look like?

Speaker C: When I interviewed at Blue Origin, the prompt was pitch us the astronaut experience. Pitch us what you think it would be based on whatever you can find on the Internet. I came in with my, with, uh, my deck that said, here is what I would do for this astronaut experience.

Speaker D: And what was that? What was the core of that at that point?

Speaker C: So the anchor for me as I sat and I researched it and I found this picture from an old Life magazine from the 1960s, a Smirnoff ad. And it was this just lovely, uh, 60s, uh, woman with her hair had just been done and she's in an astronaut suit. She doesn't have the helmet on, and she's holding a martini. And it says, if you're not drinking, smear out. Where in the world have you been? The minute I saw that advertisement, I said, this is it. This is the experience that we need to, we need to build. We are not building the experience for a NASA astronaut who has been going through school and training and a really formal process. We are building this experience for the people who have been. Their experience and their exposure to space has been through advertisements and TV and science fiction books and movies. This was my anchor point of building an experience for those people who had this stylized dream in their head of what space could be. It gave me then the freedom to reimagine what training for space could look like.

Speaker A: So I want to, I want to

Speaker D: go back to the ad.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker D: You have this sort of inspiration. You have a basic theme or vision, and at some point you have to actually say, here's what the journey is going to look like. Like, these are the different steps along the path, and this is how I'm going to do it. Um, what was something that you didn't do? Maybe it didn't occur to you at all, but it became obvious in the moment while you were doing that when

Speaker C: they first try on their flight suit. That is a really powerful moment. Um, those first launches, we didn't necessarily make as big of a deal of that first trying of the flight suit on. It was another step in your intake where, you know, you've got to get your hearing protection, you've got to pass your payload bag off. We've got to weigh it. Okay. Your flight suit fits great. You're in it. All right, let's get you weighed. Let's get your shoes on. And I realized we needed to take more of a beat with that moment. We need to make sure that we capture it on film for people. We need to make sure that their plus one, their significant other, whomever they have brought with them, uh, number one, stays in the other room while they're trying it on. And then we have a reveal. Now for. Here, let me, you know, let me go get your spouse, or let me go get your son, uh, so they can see you for that first time in a suit. Because when they're at the astronaut village and they put on that suit and they zip it up for the first time, that's when it really becomes real for the astronaut. And then you get on fate and you try that flight suit on and you zip it up and you realize, wow, I'm. I'm going to space. Like, I'm going to do this.

Speaker B: Absolutely correct. And it's like, you know, you become this superhero and you realize the weight of what you're doing.

Speaker A: Like, is that the first time that it really hits home, what you're about

Speaker B: to do when you try on that space suit?

Speaker C: It really hits home and it all builds up to that. You know, you are going to sit on top of a loaded rocket.

Speaker D: It's a bomb. You know, they're on top of a bomb.

Speaker C: This is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. You know, it's this. It's this dance, right? All the different pieces have to come together, but at the end of the day, you and your five crewmates are the ones on top of that. I think the flight suit will evolve, but I think for now, the flight suit is important. The flight suit is cool. And the flight suit makes you feel like you're doing something. And you put that on.

Speaker B: It's.

Speaker C: To me, it's like a sports team. You know, there will become a time where you won't have to wear a flight suit to go to space. But right now, I think that's. That's an important part. Our astronauts get a bomber jacket that only astronauts get. You can't buy it. And it's. It is a manifest. Like, I did something and you don't get it until after you fly to space. And for me, that's something that you can touch and feel, um, that you have. Those are, you know, some of those non negotiables for me.

Speaker D: I'm curious, Sarah, what you've learned over the last few years that you think, boy, I didn't expect to learn that. And it's a lesson so important, I'm going to take it with me wherever I go next.

Speaker C: Health. Um, I came into Blue Origin as a disruptor. Here I am, this hospitality professional coming in to just really throw the humans into a system that was ready like we. It was regimented, and there was a system and there's a timeline and there's a sequence. And what I have learned is how to humanize an experience.

Speaker D: Did you have to overcome resistance from people who were accustomed to having very few variables from humans to deal with 100%? Because in a traditional astronaut scenario, you've got a trained astronaut who is accustomed to following procedures to the T. They've got checklists, they've got training. You take all of the variability out of it by training them for years. And so everybody knows what to expect. And here you are in a different place where you've got people, they've shown for two and a half days of training. They're going to do wacky stuff. You can't control everything that's going to happen.

Speaker C: You know, we've been there, and it's time to go and load people into the rocket. And somebody's, oh, I gotta go call my mom real quick. I gotta call my mom before I load onto this. This vehicle. And we've gotta stop the timeline. Or somebody. Somebody had to go to the bathroom and they gotta zip up their suit. And maybe, like, they. They couldn't get it done. Or, or they, you know, they want to hug a loved one one last time. Uh, before, you know, on the sendoff. Before, before they go. I think, um, when we were going through building this experience, I got to sit in the vehicle while they were doing a mock countdown. And we went through the whole sequence. And I got up and we're going in the debrief. And I said. I said, but. But I didn't hear the. The GO poll. Like, why didn't I hear the GO poll? I want to hear. I want to hear him say all those things. And the answer was, well, the astronauts don't need to hear that. Like, that's not part of. That's not part of it. They don't, they don't need to hear that. They can just hear the countdown. I said, but I want to hear inco, Go capsule, go, Booster, go, Capcom, go crew, M. I want to hear the flight director. New shepherd is go for launch. I want to sit there when I'm in that seat, and I want to hear that and, uh, just because that's never been done before and the astronauts on previous vehicle didn't need to hear it. My astronauts need to hear that. They need to feel that reverberation in their whole being that we are go for launch. And I went toe to toe with the program to say, this is important. And I'm not backing down because these humans need to hear that they then altered the sequence. There's a part in the sequence now where our astronauts get to hear that go poll. And I guess that is what I will take away is you're not going to always get all the parts of it that you want. Do I get all the things my like pie dreams for this experience? Did I get them all?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker C: But I know if it is important enough and it matters to the human, I. I know how to make a case for that. I know how to stand my ground. This is important to people and this is something that they are going to remember and that is going to be their takeaway.

Speaker D: What I love about that story, Sarah, is that it's a really good illustration of something that happens in almost every organization that goes through a similar transition from an, um, engineering LED framing to a customer LED one. So, for example, in electric utilities, which historically wasn't a competitive industry, but has become one over the last several years, several decades, the name they had for customers was not customers or households. It was meters. One of the most important things that determines whether a customer feels good about you or not is how well you can share information about why an outage happened, how long you think it will take, and what you're doing about it. And the resistance from the engineers was very similar to the resistance that you encountered to the countdown story. The engineers were like, well, I. We don't know the exact moment we're going to be able to get this back up. Why would a customer need to know that? They're not going to do anything different based on it. And it was from their perspective, from the perspective of your engineers, that was a very reasonable pushback. Yeah.

Speaker C: They can't stop it. What, what are they going to do? Stop it?

Speaker D: I'm like, no, but your point is that that's the visceral experience. That's actually what connects somebody to what's happening here.

Speaker C: It's magic. It's so powerful. And I can't wait until, like, I know that I will fly to space at some point in my lifetime, and I know that the things that I am doing today to build and design and refine this experience are going to be reflected in 10, 20, 30 years from now when you take this, the rocket, and you're going to go to the space station for the weekend.

Speaker D: I absolutely love that I could keep talking to you about this for hours and hours and hours because it's really interesting. Thank you for taking the time to share this with us.

Speaker C: Oh, Rob, thank you. Uh, it's a pleasure. I love talking about it. I get just so jazzed and so excited when I can talk about the cool things.

Speaker B: Well, thank you for having me. And Blue Origin school is to make it more accessible for all. So we'll see where, uh, my husband's 8 year old granddaughter in 10 years. What will space travel look like then? Only imagine.

Speaker D: Well, to infinity and beyond.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, thank you. For the benefit of Earth.

Speaker D: For the benefit of Earth.

Speaker A: You've been listening to Customer Confidential and my conversation with Ali Keener, an astronaut on Blue Origin's New Shepard Flight NS33, and Sarah Phelps, who was Blue Origin's managing director of astronaut and customer experience. As always, we want to hear your feedback, whether it's positive or constructive. So you can leave us a review on whatever podcast, podcast platform you use.

Speaker D: You can complete our, uh, listener survey, or you can just send us some

Speaker A: comments through the link that we've put in the show notes. I'm Rob Markey and this is Customer Confidential, a uh, production of Bain and Company.