Billionaire Jeff Bezos has announced that he will fly on the first passenger flight of his space company Blue Origin on July 20th.
“I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Bezos said in a video posted to his Instagram page.
Bezos’ brother will join him, as well as the winner of a public auction being held for one of the seats. Bidding on the auction stood at $2.8 million U.S. before Bezos announced he would fly on the very first space flight of Blue Origin.
Blue Origin’s space tourism system, called ‘New Shepard,’ is a rocket that carries a capsule to the edge of space. New Shepard has flown more than a dozen successful test flights without passengers on board, including one in April at the company’s test facility in the Texas desert.
New Shepard is designed to carry as many as six people at a time on a ride past the edge of space, with the capsules on previous test flights reaching an altitude of more than 340,000 feet (more than 100 kilometres).
The capsule has massive windows to give passengers a view, spending a few minutes in zero gravity before returning to Earth. The rocket launches vertically, with the booster detaching and returning to land at a concrete pad nearby. The capsule’s return is slowed by a set of parachutes, before softly landing in the desert.
July 20 marks the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, which is why Blue Origin picked the date for its first flight to carry people onboard.