Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin One Step Closer To Making Space Tourism A Reality

Blue Origin, Amazon's space company, has now successfully launched the 12th test flight. Owned by Jeff Bezos, the crewless test took off aboard the New Shepard rocket. Come 2020, Blue Origin will fly with passengers for space exploration and tourism. The test involved the suborbital rocket crossing the boundary of space (Karman line) recognized internationally.

Blue Origin Test Flight Successful

The rocket itself is 18 meters long and reached an altitude of 105 kilometers during the testing phase. Blue Origin has been testing reusable rockets since 2015, unlike the traditional ones used in the early space explorations. In fact, the recently tested rocket had just accomplished its fifth launch.

Reports say that the engines were able to make a controlled and straight landing back on Earth. The capsule, which will carry the human passengers, floated down on the ground a couple of minutes later with the help of three parachutes. A large cloud of dust was spotted during the test touchdown.

Blue Origin Keen On Space Tourism

The idea of exploring new worlds seems alluring. What's even more exciting is space tourism. The Blue Origin capsule will carry six astronaut passengers on a space trip that is expected to last a maximum of 10 minutes. Blue Origin had initially planned to take off with the first batch of passengers in late 2019, but this goal has certainly been rescheduled to 2020.

A round trip aboard the Blue Origin rocket is believed to cost a passenger half a million dollars. Joining the space tourism league is Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire and businessman, Richard Branson.

Virgin Galactic hopes to take passengers for space tourism and touch the edge of the Earth in a plane-shaped vessel, like a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Virgin is also believed its first scheduled flight in 2020 carrying astronaut passengers for a trip.