The New Shepard Blue Origin missile is preparing to take off from the launch pad with Jeff Bezos along with his brother Mark Bezos, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen and 82-year-old Wally Funk in Van Horn, Texas.
Blue origin | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
VAN HORN, Texas – Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin has sold tickets for future passenger flights worth nearly $ 100 million, the billionaire founder announced on Tuesday.
“Demand [for people to fly on trips to the edge of space] is very, very high, “said Bezos at the Blue Origin presentation after his first flight with a crew.
The company has not disclosed how much it will cost for seats on its New Shepard rocket. The only clue about Blue Origin’s pricing structure is a public auction the company held for a seat on its first flight on Bezos, which cost $ 28 million. That’s a multiple of the $ 200,000 to $ 500,000 range that Blue Origin’s suborbital space tourism competitor Virgin Galactic has sold on its future flights.
Bezos said Blue Origin will “fly human missions twice more this year,” but said “I’m not sure yet” how many crewed New Shepard launches the company will attempt in 2022.
“We’ll find out,” said Bezos, adding that Blue Origin intends to fly space flights at a “very high” rate in the future.
Blue Origin currently has two New Shepard rocket boosters in its Texas facility, one for research cargo flights and one for air passengers.
“We really want to practice with this vehicle, so we need to build more boosters … to be able to fly more often,” said Bezos.
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