Blue Origin, the private space company, owned by Jeff Bezos, the renowned American entrepreneur, is competing with SpaceX in different fields, including space tourism. However, Bezos’ company looks like taking more big leaps in this direction that Musk’s company, as Blue Origin will commence selling tickets for suborbital flights in 2019.
With the start of the test phase of passengers flights soon, as the Blue Origin’s VP Rob Meyerson said during the last week’s Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit in Washington, DC, the company hopes it will start selling tickets for space tourism flights in 2019.
At first, the company plans on selling tickets for suborbital flights for those who’d like to experience zero gravity, but the prices for such flight haven’t been disclosed yet. However, the big plan Blue Origin has is to send people on a journey to the Moon.
Blue Origin and SpaceX are racing to conquer space tourism
To date, SpaceX is the only competitor for Blue Origin in the race for space tourism, and it might be closer than the Bezos’ company to the final goal, sending people on a journey around the Moon.
According to the Musk’s company’s spokesmen, SpaceX already has two men who signed for the space trip and even paid substantial amounts for this to happen soon. As reported, initially, SpaceX planned to launch its first commercial space flight to the Moon this year, but the private space company had to postpone it to mid-2019, although it could take place later.
On the other hand, Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket, which is capable of performing 100 consecutive flights with minimum maintenance, is currently under development. This rocket is the fiercest competitor for SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 which is only capable of performing ten consecutive launches without maintenance.
Both companies work on reducing space flights costs which would benefit both companies and customers. But, as for space tourism, Blu Origin will commence selling space tourism tickets in 2019, while, on the other hand, SpaceX has postponed its two-men commercial flight around the Moon.
