Blue Origin
Jeff Bezos started his rocket company, Blue Origin, back in 2000. And he’s been selling Amazon stock to pump billions of dollars into the effort ever since. Like SpaceX, they’re prioritizing reusable rockets and spacecraft that can drastically reduce the cost associated with spaceflight.
Much of Blue Origin’s effort has gone into developing a pair of rockets: New Shepard and New Glenn.
New Shepard can carry six people inside a suborbital capsule some 60 miles (100 km) into space. Blue Origin has already flown a dozen test flights, and they’re still planning several additional tests before launching passengers. However, in March,
Axios reported that Blue Origin could send passengers into space in 2020, though COVID-19 has caused delays across the space industry. If the company can still get its space capsule tested in 2020, it could be on course for paid flights in 2021.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin has announced that it will soon start selling tickets. The company’s website doesn’t list the price of a Blue Origin trip, but Bezos has previously said their space tourists can expect to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to fly in its New Shepard capsule.
The company is also working hard on their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift, reusable launch vehicle that Blue Origin has already invested more than $2.5 billion into developing. It’s larger than SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, but smaller than the rocket planned with Starship. That size could eventually enable regular passenger trips into orbit and even beyond. The company will need that capacity, too. Blue Origin’s goal is to one day have millions of people living and working in space.