Jeff Bezos in front of the Blue Origin space capsule
Jeff Bezos’ space tourism project with Blue Origin is competing with a similar program under development by Space X, the rocket company founded and led by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Virgin Galactic, backed by Richard Branson.
Bezos revealed in April 2017 that he funds Blue Origin with around $ 1 billion (£ 720 million) of Amazon stock each year.
The system consists of a crew capsule pressurized on a ‘New Shepard’ reusable booster rocket.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world and Blue Origin has successfully used a single New Shepard rocket six times.
At its peak, the capsule reached 65 miles (104 kilometers), just above the official threshold for space and landed vertically seven minutes after takeoff.
Manned missions for astronauts or tourists have yet to be announced.
SpaceX appears to be leading the way in the multi-million dollar space race with numerous launches bringing NASA teams to the ISS and associations to send tourists into space in 2021.
On February 6, 2018, SpaceX launched a rocket into Mars’ orbit, 140 million miles away, with Musk’s own red Tesla roadster connected.
Elon Musk with his Dragon Crew capsule
NASA has already selected two astronauts to be on board the Dragon’s first manned mission.
SpaceX also began sending batches of 60 satellites into space to help form its Starlink network.
Musk hopes this will provide an interconnected network of satellites around Earth that will broadcast the Internet for free to people around the world.
Richard Branson and Virgin Galactic are taking a different approach to conquer space.
Repeatedly, and successfully, he conducted test flights of the Virgin Galactic Unity space plane.
The first took place in December 2018 and the last took place on February 22.
The flight accelerated to more than 2,000 miles per hour (Mach 2.7).
To date, more than 600 wealthy clients, including celebrity Brad Pitt and Katy Perry, have booked a $ 250,000 (£ 200,000) seat on one of Virgin’s space trips,
The billionaire magnate previously said he hopes Elon Musk will win the race to Mars with his private rocket firm SpaceX.
Richard Branson with the Virgin Galactic ship
SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots. Each passenger gets the same seating position with two large windows, one on one side and one on the roof.
The spacecraft is 60 feet long with a 90-inch diameter cockpit that allows maximum space for astronauts to float in zero gravity.
It goes up to 50,000 feet before the rocket motor starts. SpaceShipTwo is separated from its transport ship, White Knight II, once it passes the 50 mile mark.
Passengers become ‘astronauts’ when they reach the Karman line, the limit of Earth’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft will then go on a suborbital trip with approximately six minutes of weightlessness, and the entire flight will take approximately 1.5 hours.
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