Jeff Bezos Is Going To Space On First Crewed Flight Of Rocket
Jeff Bezos is going to space on first crewed flight of rocket
Eff Bezos will make his first crewed flight in space aboard the New Shepard, the rocket ship built by his space company, Blue Origin. The flight is scheduled for July 20, just 15 days before he is scheduled to step down as Amazon's CEO.
Bezos' younger brother, Mark Bezos, will also fly on the flight, according to Blue Origin.
"I've dreamed of traveling to space since I was five years old," Bezos, 57, wrote in a Monday morning Instagram post. "On July 20th, I will embark on the greatest adventure of my life with my brother."
If everything goes according to plan, Bezos — the world's wealthiest person with a net worth of $187 billion — will be the first of the billionaire space tycoons to ride aboard the rocket technology he has spent millions developing. Not even Elon Musk, whose SpaceX company builds rockets capable of entering orbit around the Earth, has announced plans to travel to space aboard one of his company's crew capsules capable of carrying humans. British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic space company plans to conduct suborbital space flights for ultra-wealthy thrill seekers, will compete directly with Blue Origin. Branson has long stated that he intends to be one of the first passengers aboard Virgin Galactic's rocket-powered plane, but that flight is not expected until later in 2021.
Blue Origin
Blue Origin's crewed flight will take place on an 11-minute flight that will take the company's six-seater capsule and 59-foot rocket to more than 60 miles above Earth.
After six years of extensive and frequently secretive testing of the rocket and capsule known as New Shepard, Blue Origin announced in May that it was preparing to transport the first passengers in a New Shepard capsule.
Though the company has not disclosed the price of regular tickets, Blue Origin has stated that one seat will be awarded to the winner of a month-long auction currently underway. As of Monday morning, the bidding had reached $2.8 million.
Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, and the company has conducted over a dozen test flights without passengers at its facilities in rural Texas, approximately 70 miles from Marfa.
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994, initially as an online bookseller with the assistance of his parents. It has since grown to become one of the world's largest companies, with operations ranging from Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing services company with customers ranging from Netflix to the CIA, to owning MGM, the studio that produces James Bond films, to holding a significant stake in Rivian, an electric car company.
It owns Ring, a home security company, and Whole Foods Market, a grocery chain. And that's before you consider the airline, Prime Air, which operates its own fleet of over 70 aircraft branded with the Prime Air logo and ships exclusively Amazon packages around the world.
By 1999, when Bezos was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Amazon's explosive popularity had increased his fortune to more than a billion dollars. He founded Blue Origin in 2000 and previously stated that he sold upwards of $1 billion in Amazon stock each year to fund the company's rocket development.
Bezos will continue to be involved in Amazon, though he will step down as executive chairman.
Andy Jassy, the head of Amazon Web Services, will succeed him as CEO.
Mark Bezos, Bezos' brother, was previously the owner of an advertising agency and is now a senior vice president at Robin Hood, a New York City charitable organization.
Along with New Shepard, Blue Origin is developing a colossal rocket called New Glenn, which the company hopes will be used to launch US government and commercial satellites into orbit, as well as make deep space missions. Blue Origin also hoped to be a part of NASA's plan to return humans to the moon by 2024, but was defeated by SpaceX for the contract to build the lunar lander that would ferry astronauts from the moon's orbit to the surface. Blue Origin has filed a protest against that contract decision, though NASA has stated that Blue Origin remains eligible to bid on future lunar missions.
Bezos has described Blue Origin as "the most critical work I'm doing," though he has previously avoided discussing his personal desire to travel to space.
"I'm interested in space because I'm passionate about it," Bezos said during an interview with Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer. "I've been studying and thinking about it since I was a five-year-old boy — but that is not why I'm pursuing this work." I am pursuing this work because I believe that if we do not, we will eventually devolve into a civilization of stasis, which I find extremely demoralizing."
Courses and Certification
Aerospace Engineering Course and Certificate
Amplifiers Course and Certificate
