Earlier this month Jeff Bezos announced that he will be on the first human flight of his Blue Origin rocket to space and will be joined by his brother Mark. This flight will occur on July 20th. A third person has bought a ticket on the flight, keen to be among the first, for the small price of $28 million.
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The bidder for the ticket hasn’t been announced, but it fetched a lot more than many were expecting. Especially taking into account the inherent dangers of being on that first flight. For the same reason, many were extremely surprised that the multi billionaire Bezos elected to go up on the first flight. More than 7,600 people registered for the bidding process for the ticket.
The entire ticket price will be donated to Blue Origin’s STEM-supporting Club for the Future fund.
More importantly for Blue Origin, it is a sign of confidence. The company has been playing second fiddle to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for many years, losing out on major contracts sending equipment and more recently people to the ISS. If this high-profile publicity stunt goes well, it is sure to make Blue Origin competitive in the industry. It was also able to overturn a NASA decision that SpaceX will build the new lunar lander recently, making sure it is properly part of the bidding process.
Even though Blue Origin fell behind SpaceX on human flight, it is powering ahead both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic on space tourism. It will be flying many people to low-Earth orbit over the next months and years, which it believes could give it the revenue needed to start competing in more definite terms for military and science contracts.
