Jeff Bezos will charge up to £230,000 ($300,000) for a trip into space with his rocket firm Blue Origin.
The space tourism company, headquartered in Kent, Washington, is looking to sell tickets aboard its rocket for around £150,000 to £230,000 ($200,000 to $300,000), according to sources with knowledge of the plans.
Earlier this year, Blue Origin confirmed the maiden voyage of its six-seater craft will be held in 2018.
Experts believe the ticket price is not high enough to make the space tourism venture profitable, with Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimating that each launch will lose millions for the firm.
Billionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will charge up to £230,000 ($300,000) for a trip into space with his rocket firm Blue Origin (pictured)
The rumoured Blue Origin ticket prices are in line with Sir Richard Branson’s rival company Virgin Galactic, which has already sold 650 tickets priced at £190,500 ($250,000) despite not having a launch date for its space voyages.
Blue Origin will fly customers into space using its New Shepard vehicle.
Like those pioneered by SpaceX, the space vehicle will be reusable and is designed to be used for multiple flights.
It will be able to ferry up to six space tourists, researchers and/or experiments on brief suborbital flights.
Blue Origin executives told a business conference last month they planned test flights with passengers on the New Shepard soon, and to start selling tickets next year.
The company, which is based about 20 miles (32 km) south of Seattle, was started by Amazon founder Bezos in 2000.
It has made public the general design of the vehicle – comprising a launch rocket and detachable passenger capsule – but has thus far been tight-lipped on production status and ticket prices.
Blue Origin representatives did not respond to requests for comment on its programs and pricing strategy.
Earlier this year, Blue Origin confirmed the maiden voyage of its six-seater spacecraft will be held in late 2018
Blue Origin is looking to sell tickets aboard its rocket for £150,000 to £230,000 ($200,000 to $300,000), according to sources with knowledge of the plans.
Speaking in May, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said ticket prices had not yet been decided. However, two anonymous source close to the project have revealed a likely pricing structure
Speaking in May, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said ticket prices had not yet been decided.
However, one Blue Origin employee with first-hand knowledge of the pricing plan told Reuters that the company will start selling tickets in the range of about £150,000 to £230,000 ($200,000 to $300,000.)
A second employee confirmed tickets would cost a minimum of £150,00 ($200,000).
Both sources were speaking on a condition of anonymity, since the pricing strategy is highly confidential.
The New Shepard is designed to autonomously fly up to six passengers more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth and into suborbital space.
The New Shepard is designed to autonomously fly up to six passengers more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth and into suborbital space
The pioneering Blue Origin vehicle uses a vertical take-off and landing, and has yet to carry human passengers. Two flights have included a test dummy the company calls ‘Mannequin Skywalker’
WHO IS JEFF BEZOS?
Jeff Bezos is best known as the founder and CEO of online giant Amazon.
Born in New Mexico and raised in Houston, Texas, he went on to attend the prestigious Princeton University and graduated in 1986.
After a decade or so of work on Wall Street, Mr Bezos founded his own company in 1994.
Jeff Bezos was born in 1964 and is founder and CEO of Amazon. He is also the richest person in the world
He initially called his company Cadabra, and then reportedly changed the name to Amazon when a colleague misheard it as ‘cadaver’.
Initially, it was launched as an online book store working out of Bezo’s garage in Seattle but rapidly grew to include a variety of goods and services.
Now, Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world and the most successful website in the world.
In 2017, the company had $177.9 billion (£127.6 billion) in revenue and is worth around $430 billion (£309 billion).
Mr Bezos himself has an estimated net worth of $121.3 billion (£87 billion).
He has bought and accumulated a variety of different companies and outlets including: Whole Foods, The Washington Post, Twitch and IMDB.
He has a controlling share of 17 per cent in his first company, Amazon.
In 2017, Jeff Bezos surpassed Bill Gates to become the richest person in the world, and the richest person of the modern world.
He has been married since 1994 and has four children.
At this altitude, customers will be able to experience a few minutes of weightlessness, as well as seeing the curvature of the Earth.
The capsule will return to the ground under parachutes.
The New Shepard craft features six observation windows, which Blue Origin says are almost three times taller than those on a Boeing Co 747 jetliner.
Bezos’ space exploration company has already completed eight test flights of the New Shepard at the company’s Texas launch pad.
The pioneering vehicle uses a vertical take-off and landing, but has yet to carry human passengers.
Two flights have included a test dummy the company calls ‘Mannequin Skywalker.’
The company is hoping to test its capsule escape system in space, ‘within weeks,’ one of the employees said.
This feature is designed to protect the human crew in emergencies by propelling the capsule away from the booster should the rocket explode.
At the altitude the craft will reach (62 miles/100 km) above Earth, customers will be able to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before returning to Earth under parachutes
Bezos’ space exploration company has already completed eight test flights of the New Shepard at the company’s Texas launch pad (pictured)
THE BILLIONAIRE SPACE RACE: THE DETAILS
Jeff Bezos in front of Blue Origin’s space capsule
Jeff Bezos’ space tourism project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar programme in development by Space X, the rocket firm founded and run by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic, backed by Richard Branson.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he finances Blue Origin with around $1 billion (£720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a pressurised crew capsule atop a reusable ‘New Shepard’ booster rocket.
The richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos is pursuing Blue Origin with vigour as he tries to launch his ‘New Glenn’ rocket into low-Earth orbit by 2020.
Whilst Bezos is yet to leave the atmosphere of Earth, despite several successful launches, Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme has already sent the Falcon Heavy rocket into space.
On February 6 2018, SpaceX sent the rocket towards the orbit of Mars, 140 million miles away.
On board was a red Tesla roadster that belonged to Musk himself.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
SpaceX have won several multi-million dollar contracts from Nasa as the space agency hopes to use the rockets as a fast-track for its colonisation of the red planet.
Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic recently successfully conducted a test flight of the Virgin Galactic’s Unity spaceplane.
The flight accelerated to over 1,400 miles per hour (Mach 1.87).
Calling space ‘tantalisingly close’, Branson also said last year that suborbital space in test flights could be happening by this spring.
More than 700 affluent customers to date, including celebrities Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have reserved a $250,000 (£200,000) seat on one of Virgin’s space trips,
The billionaire mogul also said he expects Elon Musk to win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic craft
SpaceShipTwo will carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows – one to the side and one overhead.
The space ship is 60ft long with a 90inch diameter cabin allowing maximum room for the astronauts to float in zero gravity.
A climb to 50,000ft before the rocket engine ignites. Passengers become ‘astronauts’ when they reach the Karman line, the boundary of Earth’s atmosphere, at which point SpaceShipTwo separates from its carrier aircraft, White Knight II.
The spaceship will then make a sub-orbital journey with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, with the entire flight lasting approximately 3.5 hours.
Blue Origin, whose Latin motto means ‘step by step, ferociously,’ is working towards making civilian space flight an important niche in the global space economy.
It is also pushing forward with satellite services and government exploration projects, already worth over £230 billion ($300 billion) a year.
Bezos, the world’s richest person with a fortune of about 385 billion ($112 billion), has competition from fellow multi-billionaires Richard Branson and Elon Musk, Tesla’s co-founder and CEO.
SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, says its ultimate goal is to enable people to live on other planets.
All three are looking to slash the cost of spaceflight by developing reusable spacecraft, meaning prices for passengers and payloads should drop as launch frequency increases.
While Blue Origin has not disclosed its per-flight operating costs, Teal Group aerospace analyst Marco Caceres estimated each flight could cost the firm about £7.6 million ($10 million).
With six passengers per trip, that would mean losing millions of dollars per launch, at least initially.
Three sources said Blue’s first passengers are likely to include its own employees, though the company has not selected them yet.
WHAT ARE THE TOP ALTITUDES REACHED BY VIRGIN GALACTIC, BLUE HORIZONS AND SPACEX?
Three companies are leading the charge in commercial space travel as they race to get tourists beyond orbit.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s firm SpaceX, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are all vying to be the first companies to send up the first commercial space flight.
But while Sir Richard believes Musk is ‘doing fantastically well’ in getting cargo into space – including his own car – the real tussle is between the Virgin boss and Bezos.
Musk has reached dizzying heights with his numerous private space deliveries to the International Space Station at an altitude of around 1.4 million feet (408,000 metres), but is yet to fly any of his planned passenger-carrying craft.
Blue Origin flew its New Shepherd spacepod, which launches aboard a traditional rocket capsule, to an altitude of 351,000 feet (107,000 metres) during a test flight near Van Horn, Texas, on April 29 (pictured)
Virgin Galactic reached a top altitude of 114,500 feet (35,000 metres) during a test of its VSS Unity spacecraft, which has room for six passenger and is lifted toward space on a huge carrier aricraft, on May 29.
Eventually, the company wants to fly space tourists to an altitude of 360,890 feet (110,000 metres) going beyond the 328,000 feet (100,000 metres) defined boundary of space.
Blue Origin flew its New Shepherd spacepod, which launches aboard a traditional rocket capsule, to an altitude of 351,000 feet (107,000 metres) during a test flight near Van Horn, Texas, on April 29.
The reusable New Shepard rocket and spacecraft is intended to carry up to six space tourists, researchers and/or experiments on brief suborbital flights, the company has said.