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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) – Jeff Bezos has outlasted his fellow billionaires in valor and will blast off into space next month when his company Blue Origin makes its first flight with a crew.
The 57-year-old Amazon founder and the world’s richest person, according to Forbes estimates, will become the first person to put his own rocket into space.
Bezos announced his intentions on Monday and, in an even bolder show of confidence, said he would share the adventure with his younger brother and best friend, Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter. He said that would make it more meaningful.
Blue Origin’s first flight with people on board – after 15 successful test flights of New Shepard’s reusable rockets – will take off on July 20, the exact date because it marks the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11.
The Bezos brothers will launch from remote West Texas along with the winner in an online charity auction. There is no word yet on who might fill the six-person capsule during the 10-minute flight that will carry its passengers to an altitude of about 65 miles, just outside the edge of space, and then return to Earth without going into orbit.
In this image from video made available by Blue Origin, a New Shepard capsule uses parachutes to land during a test in West Texas on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Jeff Bezos will drive his own rocket into space next month, joining the first crew to fly Blue Origin. (Photo: Blue Origin via AP)
Bezos said he has dreamed of traveling to space since he was five years old.
“Seeing Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship to this planet, to humanity. It is one Earth,” Bezos said in an Instagram post. “I want to take this trip because it’s something I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
His brother added, “I wasn’t expecting him to say he’d be on the first flight, and then when he asked me to go with me, I was dumbfounded.”
Bezos will step down as Amazon CEO 15 days before takeoff. He announced months ago that he wanted to spend more time at his missile company as well as his newspaper, The Washington Post.
His stake in Amazon is $164 billion, which would make him by far the richest person to fly into space.
So far, thrill-seeking billionaires have had to buy capsule seats from Russia’s space program or, more recently, SpaceX’s Elon Musk, which is planning its first private flight in September. These orbital flights, which generally take several days, with visits to the International Space Station, cost tens of millions of dollars per person.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule flight, named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, would take five minutes less than Shepard’s suborbital flight aboard the Mercury capsule in 1961.
But the Blue Origin capsule is 10 times more spacious with a huge window in every seat—the largest windows ever for a spacecraft, in fact.
The company, based in Kent, Washington, is developing an orbital rocket named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
Bezos’ flight will officially launch the company’s space tourism business. The company has not yet begun selling seats to the public or even announcing the price of a ticket for short trips, which provide about three minutes of weightlessness.
Blue Origin’s launch and landing site is located 120 miles southeast of El Paso, near the Mexican border. After the capsule detaches, the rocket returns to Earth and lands in an upright position, to be used again. The capsule, which is also reusable, goes down under the awnings.
Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson – a “hateful” daredevil, mountain climber and hot-air balloon – is also planning a space ride aboard his rocket launcher later this year after another test flight over New Mexico. Virgin Galactic has completed its third test flight to Space with a crew two weeks ago.The company doesn’t want him to climb aboard until the craft has been accurately demonstrated.
On Monday, 70-year-old Branson offered congratulations to Bezos, a kind-hearted Wall Streeter book writer by comparison. Branson tweeted that their companies are “unlocking access to space – what an extraordinary thing!”
Like Blue Origin, Branson’s company will send paying customers to the lower reaches of space on up and down flights, not Earth-orbiting flights.
Musk’s SpaceX has already flown 10 astronauts to the NASA space station and has sold several seats on private flights. Musk himself has not yet committed to going into space, although he has repeatedly said that he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact.
What a great opportunity to not only take this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend. – Mark Bezos
Until recently, Blue Origin was criticized by some for progressing too slowly, especially when compared to SpaceX. Bezos has adopted the company’s slogan, “Gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, fiercely,” and adorned it on the so-called lucky cowboy boots he wears when launching his company into space.
“It is impressive that Blue Origin has done so carefully and built a reliable, less ambitious vehicle that is more likely to succeed,” Vanderbilt University Space Design Laboratory director Amrutur Anilkumar said in an email on Monday. “It is worth noting that Bezos feels comfortable taking his brother on tour; this is perhaps the best expression of safety and reliability.”
While the Blue Origin and SpaceX capsules are fully automated, Virgin Galactic has two pilots in the cockpit for each spaceflight. A 2014 accident killed one pilot and seriously injured the other.
For the seat being auctioned off, Blue Origin opened bidding online on May 5, the 60th anniversary of Shepard’s flight. It amounts to $2.8 million.
The auction will conclude on Saturday, with the winning amount being donated to Club for the Future, the Blue Origin educational foundation, which encourages young people to pursue careers in science. About 6000 people from 143 countries participated in the auction.
In a video Bezos posted on Instagram, Mark Bezos’ reaction when his brother invited him on the flight was: “Are you serious? … Serious?”
“What a great opportunity to not only take this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend,” said the younger brother.
Associated Press business writer Michelle Chapman contributed to this story
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