New Delhi: Founder and CEO of the multinational technology company Amazon – Jeff Bezos on Monday said that he and his brother Mark will fly on the first crewed space flight from his rocket company Blue Origin next month.
On his official social media account, he shared a post in which he wrote “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother.”
The US-based billionaires like Elon Musk and Richard Branson have invested billions of dollars in Jeff’s rocket start-up. Bezos will be the first of the three to travel into space on a rocket developed by his own company.
The Blue Origin spacecraft, which is set to carry Bezos and others, has undergone 15 test flights, none of which had any passengers onboard.
According to Blue Origin’s website, Jeff’s rocket company had received more than 5,200 bidders from 136 countries last month and the current highest bid stood at $2.8 million in the ongoing second round of auction.
The Blue Origin Company said that “The capsule features six observation windows and are nearly three times as tall as those on a Boeing 747 jetliner and the largest ever used in space,”
According to a media report, the startup was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for the ride, based on an appraisal of rival plans from Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc and other considerations.
Its New Shepard rocket-and-capsule combo is designed to autonomously fly six passengers more than 62 miles (100 km) above Earth into suborbital space, high enough to experience a few minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of the planet before the pressurized capsule returns to earth under parachutes.