Online bidding for the coveted inaugural spot aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard will continue until June 19, when it will shift to a live online auction.
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May
20, 2021
3 min read
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As if billionaires taking over Earth wasn’t enough, the race continues to successfully colonize the cosmos.
The Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin aerospace manufacturer is auctioning off tickets to be one of six passengers on the company’s New Shepard rocket ship in the first flight that will launch with a full crew.
The ship itself has had 15 successful consecutive missions without a crew, according to the company, as well as succeeded in escape and evacuation tests.
Related: Elon Musk’s SpaceX signs alliance with Google Cloud to offer satellite internet with Starlink
The 11-minute trip will launch into suborbital space on July 20 from Launch Site One, located in the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas.
As of May 20, the current highest bid for the spot was a cool $2.8 million.
The ship, named after famed American astronaut Alan Shepard, will launch on a historic day for space exploration. “On this day 60 years ago, Alan Shepard made history by becoming the first American to fly to space,” the company said. “In the decades since, fewer than 600 astronauts have been to space above the Kármán Line to see the borderless Earth and the thin limb of our atmosphere.”
Related: Blue Origin Is Challenging SpaceX’s Artemis Lander Contract From NASA
New Shepard, which is classified as a “reusable suborbital rocket system,” will have no pilots, as it will fly in automatic.
Online bidding for the coveted inaugural spot aboard will continue until June 19, when it will shift to a live online auction. “It’s time for astronauts to climb onboard,” Blue Origin added in it statement. “This seat will change how you see the world.”
Blue Origin’s hope to get a full crew successfully into space and back comes on the heels of competitor Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic two successfully crewed trips, one in December 2018 and one in December 2019.
Another top competitor, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, also successfully launched a crewed vehicle Dragon into space after it sent two astronauts to the International Space Station in May 2020, marking SpaceX as the first privately held company to do so.
Interested New Shepard passengers can bid for a seat through Blue Origin’s website.