(AP Photo/Donna Blankinship)
Jeff Bezos next to the copper nozzle of a LNG fueled BE-4 rocket engine during a media tour. In 2014 Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance (ULA) began a four-year partnership to develop the motor for use by both companies in future launch systems.
On Tuesday, March 8, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos took a small group of journalists around the Blue Origin rocket factory outside Seattle and showed off how far the company has come in developing new hardware.
Over the next 2-3 years Blue Origin will be taking its first steps toward commercial space tourism using its reusable New Shepard suborbital rocket ship (which had its first successful spaceflight and return to Earth in November). After some tuneup maintenance, the vehicle flew again in January using Blue Origin's BE-3 engine. .
“We may put humans in this vehicle in 2017,” Bezos said. If things go well on these test flights, up to 6 paying customers at a time could be on board the autonomously flown vehicle by 2018 for a sub-orbital flight that will offer a few minutes of zero-gravity and panoramic views through 3-ft windows.
Bezos hasn’t decided on ticket prices yet but said that “many thousands” of people have signed up for flight information.
Richard Branson's company Virgin Galactic has announced that tickets will run about $250,000 for a ride on its six-passenger SpaceShipTwo , a vehicle which should begin test flights this year.
XCOR Aerospace, also privately owned, is developing a two-person space plane, the "Lynx", is charging about $100,000 for one person to ride with a pilot in a sub-orbital flight.
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