Blue Origin, the aerospace company of businessman Jeff Bezos, wants to bring tourists to space for the first time on July 20. The company announced this on Wednesday.
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During the first tourist space trip, Blue Horizon’s spaceship, the New Shepard, would fly to an altitude of more than 100 kilometers. There the travelers would be weightless for a few minutes and see the curvature of the Earth. Then the rig returns with its passengers to the ground floor. The spacecraft is not going high or fast enough to orbit our planet.
There is room for six paying travelers on board the New Shepard. In the meantime, everyone can bid on the approximately ten minute trip. Blue Origin will announce the winners on June 12th. It is expected that the price of a flight will amount to several hundred thousand euros.
Bezos, the world’s richest person and founder of Amazon, has long been pursuing his dream of conquering space. He goes with that compete with that other tech billionaire, Elon Musk. His company SpaceX is already bringing professional astronauts to the International Space Station. Later this year, Musk wants to give a few civilians a chance to go to space, and Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa already bought from SpaceX a return trip to the moon. Plus, in a few years, SpaceX must put astronauts on the Moon and return them safely to Earth. Musk received that multi-billion dollar assignment from the American space agency NASA. Competitor Blue Origin, who missed the order, is challenging the decision.
Richard Branson’s aerospace company Virgin Galactic also wants to have the first people travel to space this or next year.
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