![]() The company has yet to achieve space flight by international standards, which sets the boundary at 100km, and despite initial plans to fly paying customers into space in 2009, it still hasn’t done so. Joining both companies in the space tourism business is Virgin Galactic. A seat on one of those flights is expected to cost slightly less than $50m (£35m). SpaceX has announced plans to bring space tourists into orbit “between late 2021 and mid-2022” in partnership with a company called Space Adventures. That flight, the first crewed launch from American soil since the final space shuttle mission returned in 2011, was also the first private flight to bring astronauts to the ISS. Musk’s company made its own first crewed launch in May 2020, sending two Nasa astronauts to orbit on the International Space Station (ISS). Previously, SpaceX had expected to get the whole thing. SpaceX has been lobbying heavily against legislation that would split the contract to bring humans to the moon in two. But where Blue Origin decided to serve the space tourism market first, SpaceX began by offering cargo services to Nasa and other organisations that needed to place satellites in orbit.Ĭompetition between the two has been fierce – and not just over technical achievements. Both businesses have focused their research efforts on reducing the cost of launches, with their approaches converging on the idea of reusable booster rockets. The system, comprising a single-stage rocket and crewed capsule, has carried out more than a dozen successful uncrewed tests so far, with the most recent April test flight a full dress rehearsal for next month’s launch.ĭespite being first to be formally founded, Blue Origin has long sat in the shadow of Elon Musk’s spaceflight company, SpaceX. With massive windows to give an unparalleled view of Earth and comfortable seating for up to six people, New Shepard is explicitly designed to serve the space tourism market, and after Bezos’s inaugural flight, seats on future trips will be made available to the general public for an undisclosed price. ![]() The system is named after Alan Shepard, the second person, and first American, in space, and the flight is timed to mark the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The booster rocket will land autonomously seven minutes after liftoff, and the crew capsule will float to earth on parachutes three minutes after that, with a planned touchdown in the West Texas desert.īlue Origin, the spaceflight company Bezos founded in 2000, began testing its New Shepard vehicle in 2015. The flight will take just minutes from start to finish, with three minutes of weightlessness as the crewed capsule brushes over an altitude of 100km, known as the Kármán line, the formal beginning for space. ![]() What a remarkable opportunity, not only to have this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend.” “And then when he asked me to go along, I was just awestruck. “I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going on the first flight,” Mark Bezos added.
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