SPACE TOURISM: TIX COMING SOON

Blue Origin, the space-tourism start-up owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, says it will start selling passenger tickets for trips into space in 2019. According to the Space News website, Blue Origin’s senior-vicepresident Rob Meyerson made the claim at an Amazon summit in Washington DC last week. He confirmed earlier updates that the company plans to start conducting manned test flights of its New Shepard rocket “soon” but then added, “We expect to start selling tickets in 2019.”

He did not say how much the tickets would cost.

Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin’s main competitor in the space-tourism race, has already taken around 700 bookings for its suborbital flights, priced at $250 000 each.

Blue Origin’s trip will take up to six passengers at a time to a point about 100km above Earth and they’ll get to unbelt for several minutes to experience floating about in a weightless environment.