Blue Origin Plans To Start Selling Suborbital Spaceflight Tickets Next Year

Blue Origin expects to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle "soon" and start selling tickets for commercial flights next year, a company executive said June 19, according to a report on SpaceNews.com. From the report: Speaking at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit here, as the keynote of a half-day track on earth and space applications, Blue Origin Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson offered a few updates on the development of the company's suborbital vehicle. "We plan to start flying our first test passengers soon," he said after showing a video of a previous New Shepard flight at the company's West Texas test site. All of the New Shepard flights to date have been without people on board, but the company has said in the past it would fly its personnel on the vehicle in later tests. He also offered a timetable for selling tickets. "We expect to start selling tickets in 2019," he said, but did not disclose a price. Further reading: Gizmodo.

One word: Amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

This really is the most amazing news I have heard in months. Kudos to Bezos in pushing humanity forward.

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[110010001000]

Truly amazing! However it remains to be seen if a human can survive at 100km above the Earth. I would recommend sending an animal up first (like maybe a dog or monkey?)

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[110010001000]

Impossible. Until these tech moguls started their rocket companies, sub orbital flight and doing things like launching satellites into LEO was not within human reach. That is why there is such excitement around SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. All run by visionaries who are pushing the envelope for humanity.

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[Mr D from 63]

"anybody can take a reservation"

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[XXongo]

Uh, you can't detect irony?

I know that irony is indeed very hard to detect on the internet, due to the general high level of cluelessness masking it, but I'd have thought that this one at least would have triggered your irony detector. Maybe you need to have it recalibrated.

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[K. S. Kyosuke]

Uh, you can't detect irony?

It's like looking into the Sun. You get blind and you won't see anything afterwards ever again. 110010001000 is the sun of irony.

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[Rei]

Look at the username.

Then glance over at the "please don't feed the trolls" sign.

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[110010001000]

How is your Tesla stock doing? Pretty good? Heard there was another fire today that burned the tent. Sounds like a saboteur.

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[Rei]

Yep, I'm up about 25% in a matter of months. Very tempting to buy more today :) How are your short positions doing?

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[110010001000]

Yes, that is a better idea. That way you are only sacrificing unintelligent animals if something goes wrong. I'll cancel the monkey and dog I ordered from Amazon.

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[registrations_suck]

Only if you're rich.

Otherwise, fuck you.

And why should it be any other way?

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[AK9oh7]

I'm certain there'll be some sort of hat, photo, or trinket from the Blue Origins gift shop at the end of the ride to cover that need.

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[d0rp]

When commercial air flight was first starting out, it was also only the rich that could afford it, but that has obviously changed. It seems reasonable that over time the same thing will happen to space flights.

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[registrations_suck]

I'm all for poor people getting the first seats on these flights, provided that they are people who are illegally in the U.S. and the flights land in Chad.

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[EnsilZah]

While BO in general has pretty good potential to do interesting things in the future, and this is a learning opportunity toward that, in itself it's just a joy ride for rich people, at best a testbed for experiments that require a limited duration freefall that might be cheaper than sending them up to the ISS.

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[GameboyRMH]

It's cool and all, but you shouldn't be so easily bowled over by a premium amusement park ride for rich bastards that's about as far from making humanity a spacefaring species as the first caveman to run down a hill holding a banana tree leaf over his head was to achieving supersonic flight.

Yuri Gagarin has been there, done that, and got the T-shirt, almost 60 years ago.

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[Humbubba]

Trump recently announced a new 'Space Force' branch of the military. Maybe that's why Blue Origin announced they will be selling space tourism tickets next year.

Trump may well farm out the Space Force's space travel to an enterprise that's not Bezos related. And if Elon Musk's SpaceX is the one chosen, I wouldn't be surprised. It would be a 3rd degree burn to Bezos. Especially after that $130 million dollar contract SpaceX won from the USAF. So, maybe Blue Origin's announcement is a foray into the poli

Can Blue Origin be judged by sloppy web pages?

[Futurepower(R)]

Is the Blue Origin spacecraft better designed than Amazon web pages?

Being more clear:

[Futurepower(R)]

Being more clear: I should say that I don't see any reason to be particularly negative about Jeff Bezos as a person. It is, however, my opinion that he is not managing Amazon sufficiently. Three examples:

1) While a customer is reviewing a product, Amazon tries to sell other products.

2) There are a lot of sellers on Amazon who try to take advantage of customers.

3) Often products are presented with insufficient explanation.

Question: Will Blue Origin, a sub-orbital spaceflight company, be better ma

Does Blue Origin have the sloppiness of Amazon?

[Futurepower(R)]

You are saying that Amazon makes more money if it is managed in an abusive way. I don't agree. Over several years, abusive or uncaring behavior toward customers is likely to damage Amazon's reputation permanently.

Amazon is allowed to be abusive, in my opinion. Part of Amazon's problem is severe lack of attention to detail.

The question in this Slashdot story: Would you fly into space with Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, when Bezos has shown a habitual lack of attention to detail? Does Blue Origin hav

If I am worth Billions...

[Tulsa_Time]

I am probably not going to risk my life on these...

Maybe I would buy a few tickets for my rivals.

Re:If I am worth Billions...

[XXongo]

Maybe I would buy a few tickets for my rivals.

Me! Me! I'm your rival! Totally! Rivaling you in every way!

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[Tulsa_Time]

There was a big IF at the beginning of that...

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[GameboyRMH]

I often say that small aircraft are the rich man's only natural predator...soon I may have to amend that to include spacecraft.

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[LordHighExecutioner]

Strictly speaking, London Tube sells suborbital flight (with orbital height just below 6,371 km) since 1863. They have a reasonable fare policy, if you are interested.

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[Immerman]

Does the London Tube actually completely lift off from the rails at some point? That seems like it would extremely bad design, and absolutely required to call it "flight", though I suppose any mag-lev train would qualify.

But to honestly call it suborbital flight you need to leave the atmosphere. Though I suppose you could argue that the normal term is suborbital spaceflight, and by using a non-standard term you can define it to mean whatever you want.

But when are they actually flying?

[eth1]

The whole FA talks about "selling tickets" next year, but says absolutely nothing about when the purchasers would actually be able to USE them...

Not going to start holding my breath yet.

start flying our first test passengers soon

[Fly Swatter]

Which "soon" is this (in order of fast to never)?

• a) internet soon
• b) real life soon
• c) lazy days of summer soon
• d) government soon
• e) Tesla soon
• f) politician soon
• g) Initial Coin Offering soon