

The peak of the New Shepard’s trajectory will be just past this limit. Want to become a space tourist? You finally can - if you have $250,000 and a will to sign your life awayīoth flights will be short, and based on different definitions of where “space” begins.īezos’s Blue Origin has chosen to define this as the internationally recognised Kármán line at 100 kilometres altitude.
#Bezos rocket full
It will be the fourth time the VSS Unity, the specific SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, has been flown to space, but the first with a full crew. It wasn’t long after Bezos announced his plans that Sir Richard Branson also joined in, setting a launch date of July 11 - nine days before Bezos’s departure.īranson will travel as part of a six person crew on Virgin Galactic spaceplane VSS Unity. The 82-year-old pilot was a promising candidate in the 1960s Mercury 13 women’s astronaut training programme, but wasn’t able to go to space because of her gender.īlue Origin’s New Shepard capsule. Two more seats will be taken up by Bezos and his brother Mark.Ī fourth seat will go to Wally Funk. One seat will be occupied by an undisclosed winner of a charity auction, who reportedly paid US$28 million for the privilege. On May 5 Blue Origin, owned by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, announced it would fly its first crew of astronauts into space on July 20 - the Apollo 11 Moon landing’s 52nd anniversary.Īfter 15 successful test flights, this will be the first crewed flight for Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship. But the question comes to mind: who has the smarter plan? A billionaire’s space race It’s a big moment for the private space industry. Over the next fortnight, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson will take off into space, because they can, on spaceships designed by their respective companies.
