07 April, 2017
Still, Bezos stressed multiple times during the news conference at the 33rd annual Space Symposium in Colorado that Blue Origin is "not racing" to put people into space, and that the team will not take "any shortcuts", and will ultimately "put humans on this vehicle when we're ready and not a second sooner".
Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has confirmed his intention to sell $1bn of shares in his e-commerce empire each and every year in his pursuit of outer space. "To make that model work, we have to do other things, so satellite customers will cover some of the costs in the early innings", Bezos said.
So, how much does it cost to keep a tech mogul's space-travel pet project afloat?
Bezos disclosed for the first time that he expects the New Glenn to cost about $2.5 billion to develop, mostly funded by his own money. With this business model, Blue Origin can become a financially profitable company off of ticket sales alone.
The company's New Shepard capsule is created to feature big windows to let tourists get a taste of space.
"We believe that commercial systems and services can augment NASA systems to meet the resupply needs of longer human missions in lunar orbit and enhance NASA capabilities", Meyerson said. He said passengers will need only about an hour of training before the flight. With reclined seats and large open windows, the New Shepard can carry passengers 100 miles above Earth to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and I would imagine jaw dropping views of Earth and its lovely curvature. Blue Origin hasn't yet set a price or begun marketing efforts.
The pod would come with the, "largest windows in spacecraft history", according to the company.
"The six-seat capsule lacks facilities, but he joked that shouldn't be a problem on such a short flight", Dean continues. Both pieces are reusable to make the trips more economical.
Billionaire Bezos said that if an individual goes to space, it changes you as each one says.
While the concept is similar to the procedures SpaceX has used to recover the boosters for its Falcon 9 rockets, SpaceX's endeavours have been far more challenging, because the boosters must accelerate to speeds of thousands of miles per hour in order to put payloads on a trajectory to reach orbit. The current plan calls for New Shepard to be flown autonomously, so there won't be any pilot on board.
