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Fly to space on new shepard, new shepard mission ns-24, nasa selects blue origin, reusable rocket engines.

Jeff Bezos Blasts Himself Off-Planet, Helping to Usher In a New Era of Space Tourism

G ive Jeff Bezos this: When he builds a rocket, he rides the rocket, strapping his own mortal hide into a seat and test-flying what he’s developed before inviting paying passengers aboard to make the same journey. “If it’s not safe for me, it’s not safe for anyone,” Bezos said in a video segment released by Blue Origin, his private rocket company, before Tuesday morning’s first crewed launch of its New Shepard rocket on a suborbital lob shot that soared to an altitude of 106 km (66 mi.).

Today, the rocket—which had previously flown 15 uncrewed missions to suborbital space—indeed proved safe not just for Bezos, but for the three other passengers aboard with him: Wally Funk, 82, an aviator and flight instructor and now the oldest person to fly in space; Mark Bezos, marketing executive and volunteer firefighter and Jeff Bezos’s brother; and Oliver Daemen, 18, a paying passenger who became the youngest person to fly in space, after his father, the founder of the Dutch hedge fund Somerset Capital Partners, purchased him the seat for an undisclosed multimillion dollar price tag.

The flight, which lifted off from the Texas desert shortly after 8:00 a.m. CT, was, by modern-day standards, a modest affair. It essentially replicated the suborbital flight of the first American in space, Alan Shepard (after whom the rocket is named), which took place just over 60 years ago. In fact, Shepard actually bested Bezos and his crew—at least in terms of altitude, flying to a loftier 187 km [116 miles], easily exceeding the 100 km (62 mi.) Von Karman line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space. Bezos’ flight just barely cleared that bar.

Still, the machinery on display today was impressive and flew its flight profile faultlessly. The compact 18 m (60-ft.) tall rocket is powered by a single engine, fueled by clean-burning liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen—the same fuel NASA used for the second and third stages of its legendary Saturn V moon rocket. The engine burned for just over two minutes, accelerating the ship to a maximum speed of 3,540 k/h (2,200 mph), and an altitude of roughly 80 km (50 mi.). Twenty seconds later, the crew capsule—which can accommodate up to six people in a roomy 15 cubic m (530 cubic ft) interior—separated from the booster, and continued coasting upward, breaking the Von Karman barrier and affording the crew about four minutes of weightlessness and sightseeing.

The ride down was a free fall for the passengers—subjecting them to a maximum gravitational force of 5.5 g’s—before three small drogue parachutes opened, followed by three main parachutes, slowly lowering the capsule toward the dusty Texas scrubland. About 2 m (six ft.) above ground, a blast of air was released from the bottom of the capsule, providing a cushioning that set the passengers down at a speed of less than 3.2 k/h (2 mph). The rocket itself landed up right on a pad 3.2 km (2 mi.) north of the launch site.

“Best day ever,” Bezos said after the capsule touched down.

For Blue Origin it was indeed a good day—though how soon the company will begin flying commercial passengers able to pay in the low six figures for a 10-minute vacation is unclear. There are only two more crewed flights planned before the end of the year, both of which will be flown by wealthier customers who will compete in an auction for the right to ride—at prices that are expected to reach into the millions. Sir Richard Branson, who beat Bezos to space by nine days aboard his Virgin Galactic VSS Unity space plane, is similarly unclear on how soon his company will at last begin long-delayed commercial flights. Both men insist they are not in competition with each other—never mind the barbs that came out of Blue Origin after Branson’s flight, pointing out that he reached a maximum altitude of only 80 km (50 mi.), a boundary that the U.S. military recognizes as the edge of space, even if the rest of the world doesn’t.

“I know nobody will believe me, but honestly there isn’t [any competition with Bezos],” Branson told NBC’s Today on July 6.

Maybe, but that’s for later. For now, both billionaires have notched big wins—earning their astronaut wings for themselves, and in the process legitimizing their companies’ claims that they have the wherewithal to open a new market for space tourism. Whether enough customers will eventually come is unclear, but the hardware, at least, is ready to fly them.

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Write to Jeffrey Kluger at [email protected]

‘Best Day Ever’: Highlights From Bezos and Blue Origin Crew’s Short Flight to Space

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Jeff Bezos and his fellow passengers are back on the ground after completing their short flight to space.

Highlights from blue origin’s spaceflight, blue origin’s first flight to space with humans onboard included the billionaire jeff bezos, his brother mark bezos, wally funk and oliver daemen. the team traveled more than 60 miles above earth..

“There’s Oliver on the left, Jeff Bezos on the right. We are about to go to space, everybody.” “Command engine start — two, one, ignition. We have liftoff. The Shepard has cleared the tower.” And New Shepard has cleared the tower, on her way to space with our first human crew. And booster touchdown, welcome back New Shepard.” “First up, your booster has landed.” “Booster landed.” “Our rocket went over Mach 3. And now they’re coming, floating back down at just about 15 or 16 miles an hour. What a flight.” “Welcome back to Earth. Congratulations to all of you. All of you.” [cheering] “Welcome back, astronauts.”

Jeff Bezos , the richest human in the world, went to space on Tuesday. It was a brief jaunt — rising 60-some miles into the sky above West Texas — in a spacecraft that was built by Mr. Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin .

The flight, even though it did not enter orbit, was a milestone for the company that Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started more than 20 years ago, the first time a Blue Origin vehicle carried people to space.

“Best day ever,” Mr. Bezos exclaimed once the capsule had settled in the dust near the launch site.

That Mr. Bezos himself was seated in the capsule reflects his enthusiasm for the endeavor and perhaps signals his intent to give Blue Origin the focus and creative entrepreneurship that made Amazon one of the most powerful economic forces on the planet.

Outside of short delays in the countdown, the launch proceeded smoothly.

Just after 8:30 a.m. Eastern time, the four passengers arrived at a bridge atop the launch platform, with each ringing a bell hung at one end before crossing to the capsule. They then began boarding the capsule one at a time and strapped into their seats.

The stubby rocket and capsule, named New Shepard after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, rose from the company’s launch site in Van Horn at 9:11 a.m., a thin jet of fire and exhaust streaming from the rocket’s engine.

Once the booster had used up its propellant, the capsule detached from the rocket at an altitude of about 47 miles. Both pieces continued to coast upward, passing the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space.

Mr. Bezos and the passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, cheering in the capsule as they experienced about four minutes of free fall.

“You have a very happy crew up here, I want you to know,” Mr. Bezos said as the capsule descended.

The booster landed vertically, similar to the reusable Falcon 9 booster of the rival spaceflight company SpaceX. The capsule then descended until it gently set down in a puff of dust.

At 9:21 a.m., 10 minutes and 10 seconds after launch, it was over.

The four passengers exited the capsule just after 9:30 a.m., and embraced loved ones, friends and ground crew as they celebrated.

— Kenneth Chang

What is the New Shepard rocket and what did it do?

Video shows inside the blue origin flight to space, the blue origin crew included four passengers who had fun during the short flight, playing with skittles and experimenting with gravity..

“You just have to wait for it. Who wants a Skittle?” “Oh yeah, throw me one.” “See if you can catch this in your mouth.” Group: “Yeah!” “Well done. Here, toss me one.” “Here, catch.” “Oh, yeah.” “Whoo hoo!” “Has it been everything you thought it would be?” “Fantastic!” “Here, look — Oliver.”

New Shepard, the Blue Origin spacecraft, is named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space. It consists of a reusable booster and a capsule on top, where the passengers sit.

Unlike Virgin Galactic’s space plane, New Shepard is more of a traditional rocket, taking off vertically. Once the booster has used up its propellant — liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen — the capsule detaches from the booster.

During Tuesday’s flight, both pieces continued to coast upward, above the 62-mile boundary often considered to be the beginning of outer space. During this part of the trajectory, the passengers unbuckled and floated around the capsule, experiencing about four minutes of free fall and seeing views of Earth and the blackness of space from the capsule’s large windows.

The booster then landed first and vertically, similar to the touchdowns of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets. The capsule landed minutes after the booster, descending under a parachute and cushioned by the firing of a last-second jet of air. The whole flight lasted about 10 minutes.

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Is New Shepard safe?

Before Tuesday’s flight, Blue Origin had launched New Shepard 15 times — all without anyone onboard — and the capsule landed safely every time. (On the first launch, the booster crashed; on the next 14 launches, the booster landed intact.)

During one flight in 2016, Blue Origin performed an in-flight test of the rocket’s escape system where thrusters whisked away the capsule from a malfunctioning booster.

A solid-fuel rocket at the bottom of the crew capsule fired for 1.8 seconds, exerting 70,000 pounds of force to quickly separate the capsule and steer it out of the way of the booster. Its parachutes deployed, and the capsule landed softly.

Not only did the capsule survive, the booster was able to right itself, continue to space, and then, firing its engine again, land a couple of miles north of the launchpad in West Texas, a bit charred but intact.

Still, the federal government does not impose regulations for the safety of passengers on a spacecraft like New Shepard. Unlike commercial passenger jetliners, the rocket has not been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. Indeed, the F.A.A. is prohibited by law from issuing any such requirements until 2023.

The rationale is that emerging space companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic need a “learning period” to try out designs and procedures and that too much regulation, too soon would stifle innovation that would lead to better, more efficient designs.

The passengers must sign forms acknowledging “informed consent” to the risks, similar to what you sign if you go skydiving or bungee jumping.

What the F.A.A. does regulate is ensuring safety for people not on the plane — that is, if anything does go wrong, that the risk to the “uninvolved public” on ground is minuscule.

Who else was aboard the flight?

Mr. Bezos brought his younger brother. Mark Bezos, 50, has lived a more private life. He is a co-founder and general partner at HighPost Capital, a private equity firm. Mark Bezos previously worked as head of communications at the Robin Hood Foundation, a charity that aids anti-poverty efforts in New York City.

Blue Origin auctioned off one of the seats, with the proceeds going to Club for the Future, a space-focused charity founded by Mr. Bezos. The winning bidder paid $28 million — and we still do not know who that was.

Last week, the company announced that the auction winner had decided to wait until a subsequent flight “due to scheduling conflicts.”

Instead, Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student from the Netherlands who was one of the runners-up in the auction, and who had purchased a ticket on the second New Shepard flight, was bumped up.

The fourth passenger was Mary Wallace Funk — she goes by Wally — a pilot who in the 1960s was among a group of women who passed the same rigorous criteria that NASA used for selecting astronauts.

Wally Funk’s long wait for a trip to space.

At 82, Wally Funk has become the oldest person to ever have gone to space. But that is not what makes her so special.

In 1961, three years before Jeff Bezos was born, Ms. Funk and 12 other women went through testing as part of the Woman in Space Program . The tests had been designed by Dr. William Lovelace for the Mercury astronauts. He wanted to put women through the same tests to see if they would be good candidates for space.

Across the board, the women who passed that initial round of testing did as well or better than their male counterparts, and of that group, Ms. Funk excelled.

When you hear about these women today, they are often called the Mercury 13, but they called themselves the FLATs: First Lady Astronaut Trainees.

None of those women have gone into space. The U.S. government shut down the program just as the Cold War space race was heating up. Ms. Funk said that when she learned the program was canceled, she wasn’t discouraged.

“I was young and I was happy. I just believed it would come,” she said in the book “Promised the Moon” by Stephanie Nolen . “If not today, then in a couple of months.”

Over the years, she applied four times to be an astronaut and was turned down because she had never gotten an engineering degree. By contrast, when the astronaut John Glenn was selected for the Mercury program, he also did not have an engineering degree .

Ms. Funk has spent the past 60 years trying to find another way into space.

“I was brought up that when things don’t work out, you go to your alternative,” she said.

Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut who served aboard the space shuttle and the space station, sees in the invitation a message to Ms. Funk and many more unsung women in space and aviation.

“Wally — you matter. And what you’ve done matters. And I honor you,” is what Dr. Coleman thinks Mr. Bezos is saying. She adds that “When Wally flies, we all fly with her.”

But for many women and nonbinary people involved in space and astronomy, the moment is more nuanced.

“These individual stories and victories are important, but they are not justice,” said Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

— Mary Robinette Kowal

What will it cost to fly on New Shepard?

For the first flight, Blue Origin auctioned off one of the seats with the proceeds going to Mr. Bezos’ space-focused nonprofit, Club for the Future. The winning bid was $28 million, an amount that stunned even Blue Origin officials, far higher than they had hoped. Blue Origin announced it will distribute $19 million of that to 19 space-related organizations — $1 million each.

The 7,600 people who participated in the auction provided Blue Origin with a list of prospective paying customers, and the company has started selling tickets for subsequent flights.

Blue Origin has declined to say what the price is or how many people have signed up, but representatives of the company say there is strong demand.

“Our early flights are going for a very good price,” Bob Smith, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said during a news conference on Sunday.

During the auction for the seat on Tuesday’s flight, the company said that auction participants could buy a seat on subsequent flights. It has not publicly stated what it charged those who placed bids, or how many seats have been sold.

Ariane Cornell, director of astronaut and orbital sales at Blue Origin, said that two additional flights are planned for this year. “So we have already built a robust pipeline of customers that are interested,” she said.

Virgin Galactic , the other company offering suborbital flights, has about 600 people who have already bought tickets. The price was originally $200,000 and later raised to $250,000, but Virgin Galactic stopped sales in 2014 after a crash of its first space plane during a test flight. Virgin Galactic officials say they will resume sales later this year, and the price will likely be higher than $250,000.

Bezos thanks Amazon workers and customers for his vast wealth, prompting backlash.

From groceries and streaming subscriptions to web servers and Alexa, Amazon has become one of the most powerful economic forces in the world. And after Jeff Bezos returned from his brief flight to space on Tuesday in a rocket built by his private space company, Blue Origin, he made remarks that drew attention to the vast wealth the company had created for him.

“I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this,” Mr. Bezos said during a news conference after his spaceflight.

Mr. Bezos’ comment prompted swift critical reactions, including from a member of the House of Representatives who serves on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.

“Space travel isn’t a tax-free holiday for the wealthy,” said Representative Earl Blumenauer, Democrat of Oregon. “We pay taxes on plane tickets. Billionaires flying into space — producing no scientific value — should do the same, and then some!”

Mr. Blumenauer expressed concerns about the environmental effects of such space tourist flights. He said he had introduced legislation he called the Securing Protections Against Carbon Emissions (SPACE) Tax Act, aiming to make passengers on such flights pay a tax to offset their pollution impact.

He wasn’t alone in connecting Mr. Bezos’ spaceflight with concerns about how Amazon’s business practices have affected his company’s employees as well as small businesses.

“While Jeff Bezos is all over the news for paying to go to space, let’s not forget the reality he has created here on Earth,” Representative Nydia Velazquez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. She added the hashtag #WealthTaxNow on Tuesday morning and included a link to an article about how much Amazon’s employees had been paid.

While those congressional Democrats offered criticism, the message from the White House was more welcoming.

“This is a moment of American exceptionalism,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said when asked about the flight during a Tuesday news conference.

— Neil Vigdor

What Jeff Bezos and crew wore to space.

When Jeff Bezos blasted into space on Tuesday, he wasn’t channeling the Apollo astronauts in at least one respect: his sartorial choice.

Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon , told NBC’s “Today” show on Monday that he wouldn’t need a traditional spacesuit for the more than 62-mile jaunt above the Earth.

Mr. Bezos and the three other crew members aboard the New Shepard capsule wore light flight suits with a shiny sheen that resemble the jumpsuits worn by military pilots, or perhaps even a NASCAR driver’s racing suit.

The blue suits, revealed in pictures and videos published by Mr. Bezos and his fellow passengers before the flight, have a mission patch on the upper left chest that features Blue Origin ’s rocket blasting into space.

“It feels good to be in the flight suit,” Mr. Bezos said in a promotional video that he posted on Monday on Instagram .

The crew member’s first initials and surnames are printed in white letters on the chest area of the suits, which have black trim and the Blue Origin name emblazoned on the left sleeve. On the right arm is a flag patch, similar to those worn by astronauts and fighter jet pilots — the American flag for the Bezos brothers and Wally Funk, and the Dutch flag for Oliver Daemen.

Blue Origin wasn’t the only company to make distinctive fashion choices in the competition between billionaires in their attempted private conquest of space.

When Richard Branson realized his dream of traveling to space last week in a Virgin Galactic rocket plane, he wore a darker blue jumpsuit made by the sports apparel giant Under Armour , complete with the company’s ubiquitous logo.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, enlisted a costume designer who worked on “Batman v Superman,” “The Fantastic Four,” “The Avengers” and “X-Men II” to create the prototype for the more functional spacesuit worn by astronauts flying in SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

An earlier version of this article misstated the altitude of a Blue Origin flight. It went to space, not orbit.

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Why did Jeff Bezos take this risk?

Jeff Bezos, a child during the Apollo era, grew up fascinated by space. “Space is something that I have been in love with since I was 5 years old,” he said in 2014. “I watched Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon, and I guess it imprinted me.”

But that passion long took a back seat to his early business ventures. Mr. Bezos, now 57, first worked on Wall Street, and then started Amazon in 1994. Six years later he founded Blue Origin, the company behind the spaceship he is flying in on Tuesday. But building Amazon — his “day job,” as he once called it — consumed the vast majority of his time, as he transformed it from an online bookseller into one of the most powerful and feared retail forces ever.

In recent years he began to step back a bit from Amazon, handing more day-to-day responsibilities to deputies. He would typically spend a day a week — usually Wednesdays — focused on Blue Origin, and in 2017 he announced that he would sell $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund the space venture.

Amazon’s success kept propelling Mr. Bezos’ fortune higher, and in 2018, he surpassed Bill Gates to become the wealthiest person in the world. Booking trips to space rose to the top of his spending list.

“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” he said , couching his investment as a form of philanthropy, after he had been criticized for not doing more to share his wealth. “The solar system can easily support a trillion humans,” he said. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts and unlimited, for all practical purposes, resources and solar power.”

“That’s the world,” he said, “that I want my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren to live in.”

He briefly re-engaged in Amazon’s daily operations at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. But in February, he announced plans to step down as Amazon’s chief executive. Andy Jassy, one of his top deputies, took over the role early this month.

Mr. Bezos said he wanted to devote more focus on Blue Origin and his other ventures.

“I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring,” he told Amazon employees. “I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.”

Now, two weeks after officially stepping aside, he has flown to space.

— Karen Weise

What else is Blue Origin building for spaceflight?

Blue Origin is developing a larger rocket , New Glenn (named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth), to launch satellites and other payloads. The first launch of New Glenn is to occur no earlier than the latter part of next year, delayed by two years.

The rocket engine that Blue Origin developed for New Glenn will also power a competing rocket, Vulcan, built by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing. The first launch of Vulcan is to occur early next year, and will carry a robotic lander to the moon paid for by NASA.

The company also led a proposed design for a lander to take NASA astronauts back to the moon in the coming years. NASA had intended to select two lander designs, but because Congress did not provide as much money to the program as requested, NASA chose only one, from Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Blue Origin — as well as Dynetics, the third company in the competition — protested NASA’s decision with the Government Accountability Office. A decision on the protests is due in early August.

What will these suborbital flights mean for the space industry?

When Jeff Bezos flew into space on Tuesday, Rick Tumlinson, founding partner of the venture capital firm SpaceFund, hoped to catch a glimpse of the launch.

“To see two flights in two weeks is truly the beginning of the tipping point,” said Mr. Tumlinson, who owns property not far from Blue Origin’s launch site near Van Horn, Texas, and, like millions of other people, watched Richard Branson’s flight on Virgin Galactic’s space plane last week.

Mr. Tumlinson isn’t alone in his excitement. Space start-up founders and investors see Mr. Bezos’ and Mr. Branson’s suborbital flights driving additional interest to the space industry. They shrug off criticisms over Mr. Bezos, Mr. Branson and SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk pouring some of their billions into the private space race.

And their high-profile launches come as investor funding pours into space start-ups , fueling companies that are working to make satellites smaller and launches more accessible. Space start-ups raised over $7 billion in 2020, twice as much as two years earlier, and are on track to continue that rise this year, according to the space analytics firm BryceTech .

“The news of the day is that they’re going to put people in space,” said Charles Miller, chief executive of the satellite internet start-up Lynk. But he believes that successful private space companies will benefit humanity by making it easier to put people and satellites in orbit.

“It’s going to have a profound impact on life on Earth,” he added.

Space technology is a relatively small, tight-knit field, investors and founders said, full of people who have spent decades working for the broader interest and attention the industry is currently enjoying. And for many of them, the appearance of rivalry between Mr. Bezos, Mr. Branson and Mr. Musk is a positive for the industry, not a chance to take sides.

“Everybody got up really early to watch Branson, and everyone will watch with bated breath what happens on Bezos’ flight,” said Lisa Rich, a founder of the venture capital firm Hemisphere Ventures and the orbital mission company Xplore.

Tim Ellis, the chief executive of the 3D-printed rocket start-up Relativity Space, added: “We all cheer for each other.”

Did New Shepard really go to space?

The United States Air Force and the Federal Aviation Administration put the boundary of outer space at 50 miles. The F.A.A. has granted astronaut wings to anyone who flies above that altitude, including crew members of Virgin Galactic’s space planes that fly just over it.

Internationally, however, the altitude that marks the start of space is usually set at 100 kilometers, or just over 62 miles, what is known as the Kármán line. The Blue Origin spacecraft exceeded this altitude during its flight.

Blue Origin highlighted this fact, and several other features of New Shepard, in a tweet on July 9, that compared the spacecraft with Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo days before its fight with Mr. Branson aboard.

From the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Kármán line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name. For 96% of the world’s population, space begins 100 km up at the internationally recognized Kármán line. pic.twitter.com/QRoufBIrUJ — Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 9, 2021

What else is going on in private spaceflight?

TV and film projects in orbit are attracting the greatest attention so far. In the year ahead, the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and a Russian broadcaster, Channel One, are behind an effort in the year ahead to send Yulia Peresild, an actress, and Klim Shipenko, a filmmaker, to the space station to make the movie “Challenge.” Ms. Peresild will play a surgeon sent to orbit to save the life of a Russian astronaut.

They will fly on a Russian Soyuz rocket. So will a Japanese fashion entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa , and Yozo Hirano, a production assistant. Their 12-day trip, scheduled to launch in December, is a prelude for a more ambitious around-the-moon trip Mr. Maezawa hopes to embark on in a few years in the giant SpaceX Starship rocket that is currently in development. His trip to the space station is being arranged by Space Adventures, a company that arranged eight similar visits for private citizens between 2001 and 2009.

The Discovery Channel has announced a reality TV show, “Who Wants to Be an Astronaut?” in which the winner gets to travel to the International Space Station. The eight-episode show, in development, is to run next year.

SpaceX has a couple of missions in the next 12 months that are scheduled to take private citizens to orbit . One is scheduled to launch in September and will carry Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of Shift4 Payments, and three other amateur astronauts , on a trip to orbit. A second, booked by the company Axiom Space, will carry three wealthy individuals and an astronaut working for the company to the International Space Station.

• Boeing & Aerospace

Ready to rocket, Jeff Bezos aims to open up space tourism

When Kent-based Blue Origin on Tuesday rockets Jeff Bezos upward on its first mission carrying humans into space, the wealthiest man on the planet will be blazing the trail of a newly hot recreation for the very rich: space tourism.

Bezos, creator of Amazon, founder and bankroller of Blue Origin, follows on the tail of the heavily marketed trip to space just days earlier by fellow billionaire Richard Branson in a Virgin Galactic spaceplane .

On Blue Origin’s rockets, tickets for its 11-minute thrill ride are initially expected to cost in excess of $300,000 per seat.

If an ephemeral experience with just three minutes of weightlessness seems a frivolous pursuit for people with money to burn, that’s not how Bezos sees it.

For him, space tourism is a way to advance and fund the technologies needed for his long-term ambitions: to make possible, in some far-off future, a sustainable space ecosystem where millions of people will live and work.

To achieve that far-reaching goal, he’s built at Blue Origin a company culture reflective of the Silicon Valley venture capital values that created Amazon and the other tech giants: an unshakable belief that technology linked with the capitalist profit motive will change the world.

Blue Origin engineer Gary Lai, one of the company’s first 20 employees and lead designer of the 60-foot-tall New Shepard reusable rocket that will boost Bezos into space, outlined in an interview the company’s rationale for space tourism.

“Even if the ticket prices are high, there are still a lot of high-net-worth individuals in the world … So there is a very healthy potential to fly very often,” he said. In turn, “Flying more and more will allow us to perfect those techniques, which will benefit all programs at Blue Origin.”

Bezos, on a 2016 press tour of Blue Origin’s Kent headquarters , likewise compared space tourism to the early aviators who flew biplanes around the U.S.

“The barnstormers who went around and landed in small towns and gave people rides up in the air, that was entertainment — but it really advanced aviation,” he said.

“You don’t get great at anything you do only 12 times a year,” Bezos said then, referring to the low frequency of NASA’s big space launches. “With the tourism mission, we can fly hundreds of times a year. That will be so much practice.”

For him and for Blue Origin, the New Shepard rocket — named after the first American to go to space, Alan Shepard — is the precursor to bolder steps later: putting rockets into orbit around the Earth, sending them to the moon and beyond.

Bezos sees space tourism on New Shepard as a steppingstone to that future.

“It’s not frivolous. It’s logical,” Bezos said in 2016. “It’s actually a critically important mission for taking this thing to the next level.”

Generating cash

After decades of waning public interest, excitement about space has been reignited over the past few years by the awesome technological innovation , as well as the marketing savvy, of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Bezos’s Blue Origin.

As a result, venture capital money is pouring into space startups, with almost $38 billion going to space infrastructure companies in the past decade, according to the latest data from Space Capital, a firm that promotes investment in the industry.

Bezos, who sold $6.6 billion of Amazon stock in May, has said he is spending $1 billion a year on Blue Origin.

But will the new public interest be maintained? The sheer boldness and engineering magic of the 1969 moon landing captured people’s imagination, but then faded as the years passed with little to show for it but dust and rocks.

In line with Blue Origin’s Silicon Valley-style perspective, Lai believes the privatizing of space and the profit motive will make it different this time. Human interest in space exploration is “almost primal,” he said.

He said NASA’s Apollo and Space Shuttle programs faded because they “required so much government support, and the political will to sustain them started to wane. They became very bureaucratic and started to lack vision.”

“What companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX and others are bringing is to make this a commercially sustainable enterprise so it will not require government funding and the biannual cycles of Congress to fund,” Lai said. “If we can make this a commercially sustainable enterprise, it will grow on its own.”

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For that, space tourism will have to be profitable, he asserts.

“We will not get millions of people living and working in space, if it is not profitable.”

‘It will make money’

In Virgin Galactic’s quite different approach to lifting tourists into space, a crewed rocket-powered “spaceplane” is released from underneath a “mothership” at an altitude of 50,000 feet, then fires its engines and launches into space. It’s guided back to land by two pilots.

Branson projects building several global spaceports, enabling 400 flights to space a year on multiple models of the spaceplane.

On the Blue Origin rocket, in contrast, there’s no crew controlling the vehicle at any point, only passengers.

The booster rocket soars upward burning a mix of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Its exhaust is a trail of water vapor with no carbon emissions.

Near the top of New Shepard’s arc the six-seat passenger capsule detaches. It descends on parachutes while the reusable booster rocket is guided down to land vertically, its descent softened by reigniting the engine as it approaches the ground.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket launch starts at 6:30 a.m. Central Daylight Time on Tuesday, July 20, in the West Texas desert. (That’s 4:30 a.m. Pacific Time.) Liftoff is slated for 8 a.m. CDT (6 a.m. PT) but could change.

Three people will join Bezos on Tuesday’s flight, two of them by his personal invitation: his brother, Mark Bezos ; and 82-year-old Wally Funk , one of the original female NASA astronauts trained for the Mercury missions who never got to go to space.

The fourth passenger is 18-year-old Oliver Daemen , son of the CEO of a private equity investment firm whose bid in Blue Origin’s charity auction had initially secured a seat on the second flight. Daemen was moved up after the auction winner, who had bid $28 million, chose to postpone to a later flight.

Rocketing into space is clearly a passionate dream for Bezos.

He often relates being captivated as a 5-year-old watching on TV as Neil Armstrong first stepped onto the moon. Bezos chose Tuesday for the flight because it’s the anniversary of that day 52 years ago.

On that 2016 press tour, he cited two reasons why humans need to go to space. The first, couched as an altruistic ideal, was to create an industrial ecosystem in space to preserve the finite resources here on earth.

The second might have come from his 5-year-old heart: “It’s a glorious adventure,” Bezos said.

Now it must also be a business, said Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s astronaut sales director, responsible for selling tickets to individuals who want to ride on New Shepard.

“Our founder has one of the most brilliant business minds around. So, this is a business. I can say that for sure,” Cornell said. “Absolutely. It will make money.”

She said more than 7,600 people registered for the company’s auction to buy a seat on the first flight. Since then, “I have been very busy on the phone talking to very serious customers from around the world.”

“While it’s a nascent market, I can tell you there’s a lot of pent-up demand to go to space,” she added.

After Tuesday’s flight Blue Origin has two more launches with passengers lined up for this year, “and many more to come,” Cornell said.

“People are clearly interested in paying more to be first certainly,” she said. “As more people go, we do see the price coming down.”

And she said the total package offered by Blue Origin is not so ephemeral. Ticket buyers will go to the Texas launch site to train for two days ahead of the rocket launch.

“All of that is part of the experience, not just the 11 minutes off the ground,” Cornell said.

Virgin Galactic, led by CEO Michael Colglazier who was previously president of Disneyland, similarly intends to market an overarching experience around the actual ride.

Cornell pitches the climactic ride to space as life-changing.

“You’re on top of a rocket. You’re going to get the rumble of the engine as you take off, you’re going to feel the G’s come on and you’re going to get that evolution of the colors outside those huge windows,” she said.

When the passengers unbuckle at the top of their capsule’s arc for 3 to 4 minutes of weightless floating and somersaults, they’ll have a striking view of the curvature of the earth, the blackness of space and the colors of the ocean-dominated planet that gave Blue Origin its name.

As for the brevity of that view, Cornell compared it to climbers summiting Everest, then very soon turning around to go back down.

“Still people do it,” she said. “I think people are going to want to do this for years and years and years to come.”

The space tourist market

Doug Harned, a financial analyst with Bernstein Research who covers the space industry, believes the space tourism business can make money near term.

“You can generate a lot of cash with these expensive tickets,” he said. “The operating costs are just dwarfed by what you can bring in revenues.”

Yet he worries the revenue might not be sustained for many years.

He said the two-and-a-half-hour webcast that surrounded Branson’s Virgin Galactic ride last Sunday, hosted by Stephen Colbert, fell flat and prompted scathing Twitter reviews.

“There was so much discussion about what an epic event this is,” said Harned. “Well, you go up there, you’re weightless for three minutes, pretty cool, and then come back down. People look at it and say, ‘Really, is it that exciting?'”

Taber MacCallum, CEO of Space Perspective , has a very different space tourism experience in mind. His Tucson, Ariz.-based company is touting “the world’s most radically gentle voyage to space” in a high-performance space balloon.

It will climb serenely over two hours to an altitude of just 100,000 feet, or 19 miles up, which is less than a third as high as New Shepard. But a successful unmanned test flight from Florida last month showed that’s high enough to view the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space.

More on space tourism

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Though it won’t provide the experience of weightlessness, Space Perspective’s enclosed passenger cabin — with a fallback safety parachute in case the balloon fails — will float in the stratosphere for two hours before it starts to descend.

MacCallum is targeting taking passengers up in 2024, though with just one test flight completed he concedes that’s “an aggressive schedule.”

“We will fly when it’s safe,” he said.

Risk and reward

In the meantime, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are ready to fly space tourists.

And Bezos has bigger plans in the works.

The New Shepard rocket shoots its passengers up high and then goes straight down again, called a suborbital launch.

That’s far short of how the more powerful Falcon 9 rockets built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX boost satellites and humans into a steady orbit around the Earth. SpaceX is expected to take a civilian crew raising money for charity into orbit later this year.

Bezos’ team is working on orbital capability. Blue Origin is developing the much larger, two-stage New Glenn rocket — named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth.

Now targeted to fly toward the end of 2022, New Glenn will take payloads and humans into orbit and eventually could go to the moon and beyond.

New Glenn’s first stage will land using the system developed for New Shepard. Its second stage will have engines derived from those of the smaller rocket. Its control software includes many of the same algorithms.

“New Shepard is a critical keystone part of all the programs that we’re doing at Blue,” said Cornell.

Blue Origin’s Latin motto — ‘Gradatim Ferociter’ or “step by step ferociously” — has brought steady success with no serious New Shepard failures. Still, there are dangers with space technology.

Virgin Galactic’s first spaceplane broke up in flight in 2014, when the crew prematurely unlocked the aircraft’s movable tail section. One pilot died and the second was badly injured.

In an April report assessing the financial risk for investors in Virgin Galactic, Harned wrote that a single catastrophic failure with paying passengers aboard, whether by Virgin, Blue Origin or SpaceX, “could have a crushing effect on demand for all.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in granting a launch license to Blue Origin, required it to take out $150 million in liability insurance for its flights. Any personal coverage beyond that is up to the astronauts.

To assess the risk for Bezos on Tuesday, no one is better placed than Gary Lai, who knows every safety system on the New Shepard rocket.

“From the napkin sketch phase through the final design and through most of the certification flights, I led that team,” Lai said.

Through 15 previous New Shepard launches, Lai’s team found problems and fixed them.

Blue Origin designed and flight tested an escape system that propels the passenger capsule to safety away from the main rocket if anything goes wrong on the launchpad or during the ascent.

Conducting hundreds of test flights, as Boeing would do for a new airplane design before putting passengers aboard, would be prohibitively expensive. Yet Lai is confident of success.

At this point, Lai said he has no sense of fear, only excitement.

“I feel we’ve done everything that we can to make this safe,” he said. “The only thing really to make it safer is simply not to fly and just stay on the ground.”

“But that is not what New Shepard was made for, to sit on the ground,” said Lai. “You need to fly.”

The opinions expressed in reader comments are those of the author only and do not reflect the opinions of The Seattle Times.

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Welcome to the age of billionaire joyrides to space

Blue Origin launched its first flight with humans aboard, including billionaire Jeff Bezos.

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has flown straight to the border of space. The billionaire — carried in a rocket built by his spaceflight company Blue Origin and accompanied by three fellow space tourists — joins a small but growing number of people who have traveled to space but aren’t professionally trained astronauts.

Bezos’s trip is a big deal for Blue Origin — although its New Shepard rocket, named after the first American to visit space, Alan Shepard , has already had 15 successful test flights . Tuesday is the first time the rocket carried humans to space. But more importantly, the journey signals that the era of civilian space tourism is officially here — or at least, it is for the very wealthy.

On July 11, Richard Branson, fellow billionaire and the founder of space tourism company Virgin Galactic, beat Bezos to the border of space when he flew there on a 90-minute trip with five other passengers on one of his company’s planes.

Bezos’s and Branson’s space travel is a reminder that space is no longer only a place where national governments set out to explore and to learn more about the universe, but a terrain that private businesses are capitalizing on. Bezos has invested billions of his own money into Blue Origin, and his company recently auctioned a ticket to space on one of its rockets for $28 million.

At a pre-launch mission briefing on Sunday, Blue Origin’s director of astronaut sales Ariane Cornell said two more flights were anticipated this year and that the company had “already built a robust pipeline of customers that are interested.” Analysts at the investment banking firm Canaccord Genuity have estimated that tourism to suborbital space could be an $8 billion industry by the end of the decade.

Blue Origin hosted a live feed on its website.

Tuesday’s flight path

Around 9:15 am ET on July 20, Blue Origin’s rocket took off from a remote desert in West Texas. At liftoff, the vehicle launched toward space, carrying a six-seat capsule containing Bezos and the other passengers, pushed upward by a powerful, 60-foot-tall booster rocket.

To reach space, New Shepard moves incredibly quickly: faster than Mach 3 , or more than three times the speed of sound. A few minutes into the flight, the capsule separated from the booster, which then headed back toward Earth and landed vertically (ensuring it’s reusable for future flights).

Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s capsule headed to the apex of its flight path and crossed the Kármán line, the internationally recognized border between Earth’s atmosphere and space. That’s about 62 miles above the Earth’s surface, about 10 miles higher than Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic flight earlier this month . Like that flight, those traveling on Blue Origin’s New Shepard were given a stunning view of Earth and had the chance to experience weightlessness.

“They’re obviously going a little bit higher, a little bit faster, but they’re still only going to have just a few minutes of low microgravity experience before coming right back down,” Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor at the US Air Force’s School of Air and Space Studies, told Recode. ”There’s also the notion of what’s called the ‘overview effect.’ That’s when astronauts do get up into space and are high enough to see the Earth for what it is, and it sort of changes how they view things on Earth.”

After reaching the apex of the flight, the capsule headed back into Earth’s atmosphere, eventually deploying parachutes to land. Overall, the whole trip clocked in at just 10 to 15 minutes .

Blue Origin’s passengers are making history

Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin back in 2000, is fulfilling his lifelong dream of traveling to space . “If you see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity,” explained the billionaire in a video announcing the flight in June . “It’s a big deal for me.”

Bezos was joined by his brother, firefighter and charity executive Mark Bezos. The flight also carried both the oldest and youngest people to ever visit space: Wally Funk , an 82-year-old American aviator, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old Dutch teenager. Funk, the Federal Aviation Administration’s first female flight inspector, was one of the first women to train to become a NASA astronaut, but was ultimately denied the chance to travel to space because of her gender. Daemen is joining the flight as Blue Origin’s first paying customer; he’s taking the place of a still-unnamed bidder who paid $28 million for a seat (that person reportedly had a scheduling conflict and will travel on a later flight ).

While Blue Origin has made history in several ways, the flight is also a reminder that many people see space tourism, at least for the foreseeable future, as primarily funded by and for the very rich — and that it won’t do much to advance science and our understanding of space.

“The experience of a few hyper-wealthy amateurs paying $28 million to vomit for 15 minutes probably won’t bring many average people closer to spaceflight or change their impression of it,” Matthew Hersch, a historian of technology at Harvard, told Recode in an email. “Compared to NASA’s space vehicles, they are clever amusement park rides with minimal utility, intended to support a tourism business that has never been part of NASA’s charter.”

In fact, Bezos and Blue Origin are not the only private ventures looking to cash in on joyrides to space. Virgin Galactic, fresh off Branson’s flight, is already moving ahead with its plans to test and modify its planes for eventual commercial service . And this fall, SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, is sending its rocket to space too, with billionaire Jared Isaacman aboard . At the same time, NASA is also bringing these companies along for more ambitious ventures, including hiring SpaceX to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.

“Showing customers [and] showing the world that they have enough confidence in their system to get on board and experience it themselves ... is a big part of this,” Whitman Cobb, of the Air Force School, told Recode. “Part of it is also ego.”

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Space tourism is here – 20 years after the first stellar tourist, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin plans to send civilians to space

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Wendy Whitman Cobb is affiliated with the US Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. Her views are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Department or any of its affiliates.

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For most people, getting to the stars is nothing more than a dream. But on May 5, 2021, the 60th anniversary of the first suborbital flight, that dream became a little bit more achievable.

The space company Blue Origin announced that it would start selling tickets for suborbital flights to the edge of space . The first flight is scheduled for July 20, and Jeff Bezos’ company is auctioning off one single ticket to the highest bidder .

But whoever places the winning bid won’t be the first tourist in space.

On April 28, 2001, Dennis Tito, a wealthy businessman, paid US$20 million for a seat on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to be the first tourist to visit the International Space Station. Only seven civilians have followed suit in the 20 years since, but that number is poised to double in the next 12 months alone.

NASA has long been hesitant to play host to space tourists , so Russia – looking for sources of money post-Cold War in the 1990s and 2000s – has been the only option available to those looking for this kind of extreme adventure. However, it seems the rise of private space companies is going to make it easier for regular people to experience space.

From my perspective as a space policy analyst , recent announcements from companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX are the opening of an era in which more people can experience space. Hoping to build a future for humanity in space, these companies are seeking to use space tourism as a way to demonstrate both the safety and reliability of space travel to the general public.

The development of space tourism

Flights to space like Dennis Tito’s are expensive for a reason. A rocket must burn a lot of costly fuel to travel high and fast enough to enter Earth’s orbit.

Another cheaper possibility is a suborbital launch, with the rocket going high enough to reach the edge of space and coming right back down. This is the kind of flight that Blue Origin is now offering. While passengers on a suborbital trip experience weightlessness and incredible views, these launches are more accessible.

The difficulty and expense of either option has meant that, traditionally, only nation-states have been able to explore space. This began to change in the 1990s as a series of entrepreneurs entered the space arena. Three companies led by billionaire CEOs have emerged as the major players: Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. Though none have taken paying, private customers to space, all anticipate doing so in the very near future.

British billionaire Richard Branson has built his brand on not just business but also his love of adventure. In pursuing space tourism, Branson has brought both of those to bear. He established Virgin Galactic after buying SpaceShipOne – a company that won the Ansari X-Prize by building the first reusable spaceship. Since then, Virgin Galactic has sought to design, build and fly a larger SpaceShipTwo that can carry up to six passengers in a suborbital flight.

The going has been harder than anticipated. While Branson predicted opening the business to tourists in 2009, Virgin Galactic has encountered some significant hurdles – including the death of a pilot in a crash in 2014 . After the crash, engineers found significant problems with the design of the vehicle, which required modifications.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, respective leaders of SpaceX and Blue Origin, began their own ventures in the early 2000s.

Musk, fearing that a catastrophe of some sort could leave Earth uninhabitable, was frustrated at the lack of progress in making humanity a multiplanetary species. He founded SpaceX in 2002 with the goal of first developing reusable launch technology to decrease the cost of getting to space. Since then, SpaceX has found success with its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft . SpaceX’s ultimate goal is human settlement of Mars; sending paying customers to space is an intermediate step. Musk says he hopes to show that space travel can be done easily and that tourism might provide a revenue stream to support development of the larger, Mars-focused Starship system.

Bezos, inspired by the vision of physicist Gerard O’Neill , wants to expand humanity and industry not to Mars but to space itself. Blue Origin , established in 2004, has proceeded slowly and quietly in also developing reusable rockets. Its New Shepard rocket, first successfully flown in 2015, will be the spaceship taking tourists on suborbital trips to the edge of space this July . For Bezos, these launches represent an effort at making space travel routine, reliable and accessible as a first step to enabling further space exploration.

Outlook for the future

Blue Origin is not the only company offering passengers the opportunity to go into space and orbit the Earth.

SpaceX currently has two tourist launches planned. The first is scheduled for as early as September 2021 , funded by billionaire businessman Jared Isaacman. The other trip, planned for 2022, is being organized by Axiom Space . These trips will be costly for wannabe space travelers, at $55 million for the flight and a stay on the International Space Station. The high cost has led some to warn that space tourism – and private access to space more broadly – might reinforce inequality between rich and poor.

While Blue Origin is already accepting bids for a seat on the first launch, it has not yet announced the cost of a ticket for future trips. Passengers will also need to meet several physical qualifications, including weighing 110 to 223 pounds (50 to 101 kg) and measuring between 5 feet and 6 feet, 4 inches (1.5 to 1.9 meters) in height. Virgin Galactic, which continues to test SpaceShipTwo, has no specific timetable, but its tickets are expected to be priced from $200,000 to $250,000 .

Though these prices are high, it is worth considering that Dennis Tito’s $20 million ticket in 2001 could potentially pay for 100 flights on Blue Origin soon. The experience of viewing the Earth from space, though, may prove to be priceless for a whole new generation of space explorers.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on April 28, 2021. It has been updated to include the announcement by Blue Origin.

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He hoped to be the first Black astronaut in space, but never made it. Now 90, he's going.

By Caitlin O'Kane

April 25, 2024 / 5:12 PM EDT / CBS News

In 1961, Ed Dwight hoped to become the first Black astronaut in space. But he never made it. Now, at 90 years old, Dwight will get the chance to finally experience space onboard  Blue Origin's upcoming mission into Earth's atmosphere. 

Dwight was selected by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to enter an Air Force training program known as the path to NASA's Astronaut Corps. 

When he got the letter in 1961 offering him the opportunity to be the first Black astronaut, "I thought these dudes were crazy," Dwight told national correspondent Jericka Duncan  in 2022. 

After completing the program in 1963, the Air Force recommended he join the corps, but he wasn't selected and entered private life in 1966.

Dwight said he felt discrimination among his peers during the training.  

"So, all these White folks that I'm dealing with, I mean, my peers, the other guys that were astronaut candidates and the leadership was just horrified at the idea of my coming down to Edwards and the president appointing me to the position," Dwight said.   

His dream of going to space fell by the wayside for more than 60 years. But Dwight has been selected as one of the six civilians to travel to the edge of space on the next Blue Origin flight in June.

Blue Origin, a space exploration company founded by Jeff Bezos, has sent 22 successful commercial flights into the atmosphere. Some of the famous passengers include Bezos himself, who was on the historic first flight, Michael Strahan  and William Shatner.

During the first commercial flight, aviation pioneer Wally Funk became the oldest person to travel to space at age 82. At 90 years old, Shatner took the title of the oldest person in space. 

Now, Dwight will have him tied. 

After his flight training and subsequent leave from the Air Force, Dwight dedicated his life to creating sculptures that depict iconic figures in Black history. More than 130 pieces of his work have been exhibited in museums and installed in public spaces.

His seat on the Blue Origin flight – which is believed to cost $250,000 – is sponsored by the nonprofit Space for Humanity , which helps send citizens to space. They also sponsored Katya Echazarreta, 26, an electrical engineer originally from Guadalajara, Mexico, who went on Blue Origin's June 2022 mission, becoming the first Mexican-born American woman and one of the youngest women ever to fly to space.

The space trip takes the civilians about 62 miles away from Earth and into the atmosphere for a few minutes of weightlessness and a view of space and Earth. 

The other five people on the upcoming Blue Origin flight are venture capitalist Mason Angel, French brewery founder Sylvain Chiron, software engineer Kenneth L. Hess, retired CPA Carol Schaller and pilot and aviator Gopi Thotakura. 

• Blue Origin

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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Jeff Bezos’s Ambitious Orbital Reef Space Station Clears Essential Milestones: A ScienceAlert Update

T he future of the International Space Station (ISS) is limited, and NASA has begun investment into its successors. Orbital Reef, a space station project co-developed by Jeff Bezos ‘s Blue Origin and Sierra Space, appears to be a leading contender, having made significant progress recently.

It has been reported by NASA on Wednesday that Orbital Reef passed critical technology development milestones, which included a recycling system designed to convert astronauts’ urine into drinkable water.

Angela Hart, the program manager for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program, emphasized the importance of these milestones, as they are crucial for ensuring that a commercial space station can sustain human life.

Throughout the testing process, the Orbital Reef’s regenerative system demonstrated capabilities in air purification, urine recovery, and water tank management.

NASA’s ISS follows a similar method for recycling water and oxygen generated from human activities, including converting urine into potable water, a process benefiting the agency by reducing launch costs and saving money.

Emergence of Blue Origin’s Space Station

NASA’s funding of Blue Origin and Sierra Space to the tune of US$172 million is in line with their objective to see the development of commercially operated American space stations in low-Earth orbit to succeed the ISS.

With these new stations, NASA envisions continued astronaut deployments and commercial opportunities, including space tourism.

NASA is transitioning the responsibility of maintaining low-Earth orbits to commercial entities to reallocate funds towards more ambitious projects like the Artemis missions aimed at establishing a human presence on the moon, lunar orbit, and possibly, a Mars mission in the future.

The Decline of the ISS

The aging ISS is contending with issues such as cracks in Russian modules and air leaks. The commitment by the Biden administration to maintain the ISS until 2030 will hopefully allow time for the transition to Orbital Reef or equivalent commercial space stations.

Although ticket prices for a trip to Orbital Reef are not yet disclosed, for budgetary reference, short suborbital trips with Blue Origin’s New Shepard are currently in the multimillions.

This article draws upon information originally published by Business Insider .

Orbital Reef is a proposed commercial space station developed as a collaboration between Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Sierra Space.

Orbital Reef has successfully passed tests on its regenerative system, which included air purification and urine recycling into drinkable water.

NASA is funding commercial space stations to shift the burden of low-Earth orbit operations onto private companies, enabling NASA to focus on deeper space exploration ventures, such as missions to the moon and Mars.

NASA awarded Blue Origin and Sierra Space a combined sum of US$172 million for the development of the space station.

The ISS recycles water through a system that purifies water from various human activities, including urine, which is turned into drinkable water. This reduces launch costs for the agency.

The ISS is set to be operational until at least 2030, after which it will potentially be replaced by commercial space stations like Orbital Reef.

The progress of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Sierra Space’s Orbital Reef represents a significant stride in the development of the next generation of space stations. As NASA shifts its focus towards ambitious projects such as Artemis, Orbital Reef’s completion of key technological milestones showcases the potential for commercial entities to take up the mantle of low-Earth orbit operations. With the ISS approaching the end of its lifespan, the era of commercial space stations that cater to both professional astronauts and space tourists is drawing nearer, signaling a new age in space exploration and travel.

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The case against Patanjali, space tourism, and Sam Pitroda controversy

First, Indian Express’ Apurva Vishwanath joins us to talk about the petition that was filed by the Indian Medical Association against Patanjali, claiming that their advertisements violated the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act.

Next, Indian Express ’ Anonna Dutt talks to us about Blue Origin, a private space company owned by Jeff Bezos, giving people a chance to experience space travel. (9:00)

And finally, we talk about Sam Pitroda’s comments on the US’s inheritance tax and what reactions it got from the BJP . (14:32)

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Jeff Bezos Earns So Much He Could Buy a Rolex Every Second — How Does He Make Money?

April 25, 2024 — 05:30 pm EDT

Written by Nia Watson for GOBankingRates  ->

Rolex is a luxury designer brand, which caters to a wealthier demographic of buyers, with the average cost of a watch ranging from $7,000 to $12,000. 

Find Out: 29 Celebrities Who Are Even Richer Than You Think Discover: 5 Genius Things All Wealthy People Do With Their Money

This is a small price tag for ultra rich individuals like founder and former CEO of Amazon Jeff Bezos, who currently has a net worth of $189.9 billion, according to Forbes as of April 2024. Divided by 525,600 minutes in the calendar year, this breaks down to $361,301 every 60 seconds — enough to purchase a Rolex watch almost every second. 

Here is a breakdown of three points of Bezos’ wealth:

Although he stepped down as CEO in 2021, a majority of Bezos’ wealth is tied to Amazon, the e-commerce company he started in 1994. Since the beginning of the year, Bezos has been selling his shares. In the first two weeks of February, he sold over $2 billion in stock, according to filing data from the United States Security and Exchange Commission. 

2. Investments

Through Bezos Expeditions, which was founded in 2005, Bezos invests in a range of companies like Zocdoc, Uber Technologies Inc. and Nautilus Biotechnology. He invested in Airbnb Inc. in 2011 and the firm is currently valued over $100 million, according to U.S. News & World Report . 

3. Real Estate

Bezos bought a third mansion on Indian Creek Island in Miami earlier in April 2024 for $90 million, increasing his already large real estate portfolio, according to Bloomberg . He holds additional properties in Hawaii, Washington, New York just to name a few, as Architectural Digest reported.

In recent years, Bezos has shifted his attention towards the aerospace company Blue Origin. The space tourism industry continues to grow in popularity for the ultra wealthy — in 2021, Blue Origin reported a flight ticket was auctioned off for $28 million.

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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com : Jeff Bezos Earns So Much He Could Buy a Rolex Every Second — How Does He Make Money?

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Earth Fund Is Boycotting Israel

Jeff Bezos, founder of private space company Blue Origin and the Amazon.com, visited the Los Angeles Air Force base, Space and Missile Systems center and spoke to the Commanders and Leaderships of Air Force Space Command at Ft. MacArthur, San Pedro, Calif., Oct 25, 2017. (Wikipedia)

Jeff Bezos does not think Israel is worthy of investment these days, even when it comes to new “green” technologies and ways to feed the world without harming the environment. His Bezos Earth Fund refused to offer any grant money to Israeli organizations, specifically the Good Food Institute , developing alternative proteins for food because of the war against Hamas in Gaza. So, apparently, Jeff Bezos thinks that placating certain extremists who hate Israel no matter what it does is more important than saving the world.

The Good Food Institute Israel is the country’s leading alternative protein think tank, accelerating a shift toward a more secure, sustainable, and just food system through open-access food science, R&D, corporate engagement, and public policy.

Globally, meat consumption is the highest it’s ever been, and according to the United Nations, global meat production is projected to double by 2050. This is due to increasing populations and rising incomes in low-to-middle-income countries, which is also correlated with increasing meat consumption in those countries.

By making meat, dairy, eggs, and seafood from plants or cultivating them directly from cells, we can modernize protein production, mitigate the environmental impact of our food system, decrease the risk of zoonotic disease, and ultimately feed more people with fewer resources. Studies show that people’s day-to-day food choices are driven by taste, price, and convenience, so at the Good Food Institute, we’re working to make alternative proteins delicious, affordable, and accessible.

But the Bezos Fund is not too concerned about all of this.

Andy Jarvis, Director of Future of Food at Bezos Earth, sent an email to Israeli researchers and the Good Food Institute telling them about the decision, reported Calcalist.

“Thank you again for all the time and effort you put into developing an impressive proposal for an Alternative Protein Center of Excellence, and also for hosting my visit back in September and showing me the wonderful things you are up to on alternative proteins,” wrote Jarvis. “I was awed to see such a robust ecosystem for alternative proteins developing in Israel during my visit and have been enthusiastic about the prospect of a Center of Excellence in the region. The feedback from November’s evaluation panel was that both Israeli proposals would be poised to make phenomenal contributions to the sector.”

“Unfortunately,” added Jarvis, “the events of October obviously have had an effect. Given the uncertainty around the war at the current time, such a large and significant grant for a Bezos Center is not a viable option for us in the current situation. We’ll monitor the situation, and should the situation dramatically improve, we will of course be in touch.”

The Bezos Earth Fund is helping transform the “fight against climate change and nature loss with the largest ever philanthropic commitment to address these problems,” but not in Israel. Jeff Bezos committed $10 billion “to protect nature and address climate change,” but not in Israel.

The Bezos Earth Fund invites proposals from practitioners, researchers, and innovators in universities, NGOs, private companies, and organizations, including from Israel. However, Israelis can expect to be rejected.

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Jeff Bezos' Space Trek Could Usher In New Era Of Space Tourism

Geoff Brumfiel

Jeff Bezos announced that he will make a brief trip into space next month. The launch could herald a new era of space tourism.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Billionaire Jeff Bezos announced that he will be going to space. Bezos, who made his fortune starting Amazon, is also the owner of a commercial spaceflight company. NPR's Geoff Brumfiel reports that the trip will be short but significant. And we should note that Amazon is a financial supporter of NPR.

GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: In an Instagram post with soaring music, Bezos said that flying into space was the culmination of a lifelong dream.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JEFF BEZOS: It's a thing I've wanted to do all my life. It's an adventure. It's a big deal for me.

BRUMFIEL: This flight will be what's called suborbital, meaning that Bezos will experience just a few minutes of weightlessness before falling back to Earth. Does that really count?

LAURA FORCZYK: Well, it depends on your definition of space.

BRUMFIEL: Laura Forczyk is the owner of Astralytical, a space consulting firm.

FORCZYK: People who go above 100 kilometers are generally seen by the international community as having gone to space, but some people consider one orbit necessary to go to space.

BRUMFIEL: Bezos will put a toe across the official 100 kilometer line aboard his spacecraft called New Shepard. It's a bell-like capsule with enormous windows that can seat six. Unlike other spaceships, New Shepard's 10-minute flight is fully automated. No pilot is required. Although it hasn't flown with people aboard just yet, its safety record so far is very good, says Forczyk. It experienced a problem on its very first flight.

FORCZYK: But ever since then, it has gone very smoothly.

ARIANE CORNELL: And touchdown.

PATRICK ZEITOUNI: That was beautiful.

CORNELL: Absolutely spectacular - a beautiful launch and landing for both the crew capsule and the booster.

BRUMFIEL: The latest test flight in Texas was the 15th successful mission. Forczyk says Bezos clearly thinks it's ready for humans.

FORCZYK: I think that it's a real vote of confidence that Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, and presumably his insurer have allowed him to be on this first flight.

BRUMFIEL: Bezos will also bring along his brother. Another seat is being sold to the highest bidder in an online auction. The flight scheduled for next month will be a big milestone for space tourism, which has been going on for decades in fits and starts. Later this year, SpaceX, a rival to Bezos' company, says it will take tourists all the way into orbit for a few days. But Forczyk says if you're thinking this is going to mean you get to go to space soon, well, don't get your hopes up.

FORCZYK: It's going to be some time before you and I can purchase a flight unless you or I, which I am not, is ultrawealthy.

BRUMFIEL: The ticket for that other seat next to Bezos is currently selling for well over $3 million, and there's still days left to go in the auction.

Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.

Copyright © 2021 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Jeff bezos has been predicting amazon's 'inevitable death' for years and says lifespans of large companies 'tend to be 30-plus years' not 100.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN ) Founder Jeff Bezos has always been unusually frank about the potential decline and eventual demise of his company. This sentiment has been a recurring theme in his communications, expressing a clear understanding that even the mightiest companies have limited lifespans.

Bezos has often used this perspective as a rallying cry to drive innovation at Amazon, pushing the company to stay ahead of potential decline through continuous evolution and reinvention.

Under Bezos's leadership, Amazon has grown into a colossal tech and retail giant, yet he has consistently reminded stakeholders of the company's mortality. Between 2013 and 2018, he openly discussed Amazon's “inevitable” death on multiple occasions, even predicting during a 2018 all-hands meeting that “Amazon will go bankrupt” one day.

“If you look at large companies, their lifespans tend to be 30-plus years, not 100-plus years,” he said, emphasizing that many large companies do not last beyond several decades.

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This outlook was also evident in his final letter to shareholders in 2021, when Bezos quoted biologist Richard Dawkins, saying, “Staving off death is a thing that you have to work at.”

Here, Bezos likened the effort required to maintain the vitality of a living organism to the efforts required to keep a company thriving. He warned against the company becoming too typical and losing its distinctiveness, equating corporate stagnation with death.

Bezos often reinforced this point with his Day One philosophy, asserting that for Amazon, it must always be Day One. This mindset focuses on maintaining the agility, curiosity and urgency of a startup. He articulated that moving to Day Two implies stasis, irrelevance and slow decline, which he saw as the beginning of the end.

These acknowledgments of Amazon’s possible future serve not just as warnings but as motivation. Bezos has aimed to cultivate an organizational culture that pursues innovation and operational excellence to stave off the decline that he views as inevitable without such effort. His leadership philosophy suggests that recognizing and confronting the prospect of failure can galvanize a company to maintain its competitive edge and vitality.

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Bezos stepped down as CEO but moved into the role of executive chairman to continue influencing Amazon's path, albeit in a different capacity.

Earlier this year, Bezos sold 50 million Amazon shares, netting approximately $8.5 billion. The financial move was part of a broader strategy that included his relocation from Seattle to Miami,  a decision influenced by personal and business considerations. His move to Florida was particularly advantageous because of the state’s favorable tax laws, allowing him to save about $600 million in taxes he would have incurred under Washington’s capital gains tax, introduced in 2021.

He has made significant real estate investments in Florida, spending hundreds of millions on properties in the ultra-exclusive Billionaire Bunker. He purchased one estate for $90 million and two others for a combined $149 million.

Bezos’s transition to Florida also marked a shift in focus toward his aerospace company Blue Origin, which benefits from proximity to Cape Canaveral — a key location for launching and manufacturing rockets and spacecraft. This strategic relocation supports his vision for space exploration and Blue Origin’s expansion, which is expected to boost local investment and job creation.

Elon Musk Is Bullish On Austin. Here’s How To Invest In The City’s Growth Before He Floods It With New Tech Workers .

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This article Jeff Bezos Has Been Predicting Amazon's 'Inevitable Death' For Years And Says Lifespans Of Large Companies 'Tend To Be 30-Plus Years' Not 100 originally appeared on Benzinga.com

© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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Electrostal History and Art Museum

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Anna Wintour to crown Jeff Bezos, Lauren Sanchez as new American royalty on Met Gala red carpet

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When Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos step on to the red carpet at the Met Gala next month, it will mark their coronation as America’s new royalty.

Page Six has learned that the couple have been wooed by Anna Wintour and will attend the night.

It puts the Amazon king and his bride-to-be at the apex of celebrity and power, from Hollywood to Washington, DC, to Miami — and now to New York’s most glittering social event.

Their court is stuffed with power players including Kris Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Barry Diller — who threw the couple an engagement party — and David Geffen, and aides from stylists to schedulers.

They dispense largesse in the form of a “courage and civility award,” and mingle with other royalty, including not just King Charles , but Prince William and his exiled brother Prince Harry .

They even have a $500 million royal yacht, Koru , the largest sailing yacht in the world.

And this month their vast political power was recognized when they were invited to the White House by President Joe Biden for a state dinner for the prime minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida, where they joined guests including JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Apple’s Tim Cook.

Bezos, 60, declined to answer whether he will be donating to Biden’s campaign.

But his net worth of $197 billion means that he is now the Democrats’ target number one for cash.

A Washington, DC, source who has worked closely on fundraising with the White House said that when organizing state dinners, some spots are discreetly offered to people “supportive” of the president’s “fundraising endeavors.”

The source told Page Six of the invite, “If Bezos is not already supporting one of the super PACS it’s a strong indication that he’s being courted to support one of the super PACS.

“The question is whether he’ll become the Dems equivalent to the Koch brothers’ relationship with the Republicans.”

Billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David were for years seen as the Republicans’ most important donors.

They founded Americans for Prosperity Action, have pumped their own cash into a host of conservative groups and have galvanized others to follow their lead.

Now Democrats sense they could hit a similar cash gusher.

Bezos — who stepped down as Amazon CEO in July 2021 — and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump have a feud that dates back to 2015, which resulted in Bezos joking that Trump should be sent to space.

Since then, Trump has called Bezos “Jeff Bozo” and said it would be a “great idea” if employees at the Bezos-owned Washington Post went on a “really long strike.”

Intriguingly, Sanchez is now one of the highest-profile Latinas in the country, a demographic that Democrats are concerned has been drifting towards the Republicans .

The couple recently moved to Florida — home to a large Latino community and historically a swing state, although recently firmly Republican.

Earlier this month, Bezos purchased a home for approximately $90 million in Indian Creek Village, Miami— colloquially known as Billionaire Bunker.

It’s the third property he owns in the exclusive neighborhood, where Tom Brady lives, alongside Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

The couple will live in the home while the other two homes are torn down, according to Bloomberg .

Last month, Sanchez and Bezos honored Eva Longoria — a prominent Latina Democratic supporter who stumped for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — with the Bezos Courage and Civility Award and gave the actress a $50 million grant for her charitable endeavors.

“She once said superheroes and even everyday heroes don’t often look like her father, or sound like her Tio – her uncle. But they can and they should,” Sanchez wrote on Instagram .

If Bezos brought the scent of almost unlimited money to the White House, Sanchez, 54, added the glamor, clad in a $2,200 red lace and satin corset dress by Rasario which raised eyebrows for its generous display of cleavage .

ALICE + Olivia designer Stacey Bendet told Page Six, “Lauren has what I call BGE, best girl energy, these are the girls you want in your life.

“She’s truly the sexiest woman in the world – she owns it, why can’t she look sexy at the White House? I doubt anyone at the White House complained!”

The former TV reporter now has her own stylist, Kelly Johnson, who counts Catherine Zeta Jones, “Abbot Elementary” star Lisa Ann Walter, and actress Tamera Mowry among her clients.

Johnson also dressed Sanchez in a revealing red Lever Couture gown for the Vanity Fair Oscars party last month.

Sanchez’s glam squad frequently includes hair stylist Olivia Halpin and make-up artist Laura Ann who wrote online, “It’s an honor watching you and @jeffbezoschange the world!” She also turns to Jamie Sherrill — known as Nurse Jamie — for tweaks and treatments.

She also counts Hollywood power women Lydia Kives — married to Hollywood super-connector Michael Kives — and entrepreneur Veronica Smiley Grazer, married to producer Brian Grazer, as her best friends.

Sanchez has helped make-over Bezos into a character seemingly based on Tony Stark from Iron Man, while Bezos has introduced his fiancée to a string of significant power brokers.

He has a longtime friendship with Wintour, which dates back to 2012 when Amazon first sponsored the Met Gala, and Bezos, then honorary chairman, was joined by his then-wife Mackenzie Scott.

Back then, he took styling advice from Wintour, who advised him to team a pocket square with his Tom Ford tux.

Bezos then attended the gala solo in 2019 — weeks after it was revealed that he had been having an affair with Sanchez — and was divorcing Scott , the mother of his three sons and one daughter.

Sanchez soon also divorced her husband, Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, with whom she has two children, Evan, 17, and Ella, 16. She also has a son, Nikko, 23, with former NFL player Tony Gonzalez.

In January 2020,  the couple joined Wintour for a lengthy lunch at St Ambroeus in the West Village, and in September 2022, they attended a star-studded party at Wintour’s Manhattan townhouse alongside a slew of other A-listers like Hugh Jackman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and singer Florence Welch.

Now Sanchez has her own relationship with Wintour — who as well as running the Met Gala, is one of the Democratic party’s most prominent media cheerleaders.

In June 2022, Sanchez had a power girls night out with Wintour and Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abdein at Indochine in Noho, Manhattan, before they went to the Public Theater.

Then came a Vogue shoot with celeb snapper Annie Leibovitz in November.

She photographed Sanchez inside the 10,000 Year Clock, a subterranean project in West Texas — and posing with Bezos in a shoot that was dubbed “uncomfortable” and “cringe”.

In one photo, the lovebirds sat in the front seat of a retro van while Bezos wore a brown cowboy hat, black T-shirt and blue jeans while Sánchez flaunted her arm muscles in a tight white tank.

Unfortunately for the couple, several readers were not fans of their looks or the idea that “Vogue” was “glamorizing” the billionaire. Some even likened Sanchez to rocker Steven Tyler.

The slings and arrows, particularly online, have stepped up recently.

Last week, legendary New York restaurateur Keith McNally wrote online, “Does anybody else find Jeff Bezos’ New wife – Lauren Sanchez – ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING?’” 

‘What an ugly and F***ing SMUG – LOOKING couple they make. Is this what having 1000 Billion dollars does to people?”

The response from the Bezos-Sanchez orbit was rapid.

Sanchez’s younger sister Elena Sanchez Blair retorted, “This is my sister you are talking about. A human being. One of the kindest, most loving people in the world. This is cruel and hurtful.”

Sanchez herself shrugged off the lèse-majesté by posting an inspirational speaker’s quote, “People will love you. People will hate you. And none of it will have anything to do with you.”

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