Blue Origin wants to bring first tourists to space in 2018
Speaking to journalists, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos said he plans to start bringing tourists to space in 2018 with his company Blue Origin. He wants to start manned testing for this in 2017.
Bezos founded Blue Origin way back in 2000, but has since released little information about its ongoing projects. On Tuesday, however, a number of journalists were invited to take a look inside the space company’s buildings. According to The Guardian, Bezos said it will begin crewed test flights in 2017. The New York Times adds that Blue Origin may begin tourist trips to space as early as 2018.
Depending on the tests, six paying tourists could take short trips to space at a time, Bezos said. Once there, they can experience the feeling of weightlessness for a few minutes. The start of these trips is partly dependent on the trials of the Blue Engine-4 rocket engine that has been in development since 2011. Tests with this engine will take place at the end of this year. The Blue Engine 4 produces 2400 kilonewtons of propulsive power and burns both liquid oxygen and liquefied natural gas.
Thousands of people have already signed up to pay for space travel, Bezos said. Blue Origin doesn’t accept payments yet, so whether those numbers will persist remains to be seen. Tourist trips are therefore not the company’s primary source of income. Money must be made from selling rocket engines to other companies, such as United Launch Alliance. Also, Bezos has already invested a significant amount of his Amazon-earned money into the company. Ultimately, he wants to be able to reduce costs so much that building a colony on Mars is within reach.
As with the SpaceX program, Blue Origin focuses on being able to reuse the devices. “I know we can’t afford to throw the hardware away,” Bezos said. Since the company was founded in 2000, New Shepard rockets have been launched three times, with the most recent landing successful. The last few times SpaceX tried to land its Falcon 9 rocket, things went wrong. This was attempted on a sea platform. When the Falcon 9 landed on solid ground, there was success. The Falcon 9 rockets make different kind of flights, so that the landing techniques of SpaceX cannot be equated with those of Blue Origin.
Blue Origin is not the only company engaged in enabling tourism space travel. Companies such as Virgin Galactic have also arrived at the test phase of their missiles. Bezos doesn’t care about this. The main goal is not to be the first, but to be as safe as possible.