British billionaire Richard Branson, whose own space company, Virgin Galactic, is planning on conducting flights to suborbital space for ultra-wealthy thrill seekers and competing directly with Blue Origin. Not even Elon Musk, whose SpaceX builds rockets powerful enough to enter orbit around Earth, has announced plans to travel to space aboard one of his companies human-worthy crew capsules. If all goes according to plan, Bezos - the world’s richest person with a net worth of $187 billion - will be the first of the billionaire space tycoons to experience a ride aboard the rocket technology that he’s poured millions into developing. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin to auction ticket for first space tourism flight Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg via Getty Images Matthew Staver/Bloomberg/Getty Images Bezos has been reinvesting money he made at Amazon since he started his space exploration company more than a decade ago, and has plans to launch paying tourists into space within two years. and founder of Blue Origin LLC, speaks at the unveiling of the Blue Origin New Shepard system during the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., on Wednesday, April 5, 2017. The company plans to send satellites into space once New Glenn is fully operational.Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer of Inc. The French satellite operator Eutelsat became the first customer to purchase a spot on New Glenn back in March 2017. The company teamed up with Lockheed Martin, Draper and Northrop Grumman to build a lunar lander for NASA, but the contract was awarded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX. From those proceeds, 19 nonprofit organizations were selected to receive $1 million grants.Īlthough a crewed launch has been a priority for Blue Origin, the company also has goals to provide satellite services and potential human space habitation.īezos’ company is also developing a larger rocket called New Glenn, which is designed to launch satellites. Proceeds from the auction went to the Club for the Future foundation, which was founded by Blue Origin and is aimed at promoting science, technology, engineering and math careers. “Our early flights are going for a very good price.”īidding for a ticket to board Tuesday’s flight went on for more than a month. The “willingness to pay continues to be quite high,” Smith said. Ariane Cornell, the company’s director of astronaut sales, said Sunday there is a robust pipeline of interested customers. “We now know it’s ready to go, and we can prove it,” Smith told reporters Sunday.īlue Origin has not announced the price range or number of tickets available for future flights. The system has been tested over the course of 15 missions, which includes tests of the capsule’s escape system. New Shepard’s mission will follow a sequence familiar from NASA’s Apollo missions and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon launches, albeit on a smaller scale: A crew capsule sits atop the rocket booster and separates from it in flight, with the two returning to Earth independently. Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson celebrated on Sunday after successfully going to suborbital space on a crewed flight. Funk and Daemen will become the oldest and youngest individuals to travel to space.īusiness Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic crew go to the edge of space and back The launch was delayed by about 11 minutes.Īboard the New Shepard, in addition to Bezos, 57, will be Mark Bezos, the billionaire’s 53-year-old brother aviation pioneer Wally Funk, 82 and Oliver Daemen, 18. There was a brief 15-minute hold in the countdown as the timelines got aligned, but it was lifted a few minutes before 6 a.m. Pacific time with a livestream starting at 4:30 a.m. The flight was set to take off from a launch pad near Van Horn, Texas, at 6 a.m. Sixteen years after he set out in earnest to commercialize space travel, Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, is scheduled to take its biggest step yet in that direction, with its founder along for the ride.īezos, the founder of and owner of the Washington Post, will be aboard the launch vehicle New Shepard along with three other passengers for its first crewed flight Tuesday morning. The richest man in the world is counting down the minutes to his spacefaring debut.
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