Jeff Bezos to Set Off on Space Journey on New Shepard in July
Coinspeaker
Jeff Bezos to Set Off on Space Journey on New Shepard in July
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and billionaire with a US$186.7 billion net worth, will be taking a trip to space alongside his brother Mark Bezos on New Shepard, designed and created by his space exploration company Blue Origin.
Jeff Bezos recently took to Instagram to announce his much-anticipated space tour after dozens of rocket testing in rural Texas. This commercial 11-minute flight to space will be launched on the 52nd Anniversary of America’s biggest achievement in space history, the Apollo 11 moon landing mission. Bezos’ brother and best friend Mark Bezos will join him in addition to the winner of the auction held on the website that will decide who wins the seat inside the capsule to join Bezos in this opportunity of a lifetime. The flight will take off 15 days after Bezos will step down as the CEO and pass the baton to Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services.
The auction, held in three phases, would end on July 12 and is already at a high of $2.8 million, having garnered the participation of almost 6000 people coming from more than 140 countries. The proceeds from the bid that wins will go to the fund box of the non-profit organization, Club for the Future, founded by Blue Origin, which is an exciting project that aims to inspire the youth and encourage a novel generation of space enthusiasts and space tycoons.
Blue Origin is the brainchild of Jeff Bezos who started it in 2000, a year after he won the Time Magazine’s People of the Year title. He was already a billionaire by then and funded his space technology at Blue Origin trading Amazon stocks. Bezos’ passion and love for space have made this human space flight possible. This flight is a significant event for the CEO whose love for space can be seen through his cameo in Star Trek: Beyond. Bezos agrees that he always wanted to take this risk and he is sure that this would redefine his relationship with the planet and the entire humanity.
New Shepard, a reusable rocket, will launch the 3-person crew to the edge of space. New Shepard has in the last 6 years, launched a dozen tests, the latest one being as recent as April 2021. The capsule, designed for 6 passengers in total, has enormous window panes, which will help the crew to have a clear visual experience of the cosmic view in space. After leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, the capsule will get separated from the booster at the Karman line. It is here that the crew would experience weightlessness while being a spectator to the Earth’s curvature. Jeff Bezos will surely be setting this new trend of billionaires going on short space trips in motion as there are already plans by his competitors to get in the race.
Amidst the battle between billionaires and their space tourism ambitions, Jeff Bezos finally comes out victorious, though he lost the chance to join NASA’s new moon mission to SpaceX, the Aerospace Company founded and run by Elon Musk. Bezos’ Blue Origin is not alone but has solid competitors in the commercial space flight industry namely Virgin Galactic by English business tycoon Richard Branson and SpaceX by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Jeff Bezos to Set Off on Space Journey on New Shepard in July