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Blue Origin Plans To Start Selling Suborbital Spaceflight Tickets Next Year (spacenews.com)
Blue Origin expects to start flying people on its New Shepard suborbital vehicle "soon" and start selling tickets for commercial flights next year, a company executive said June 19, according to a report on SpaceNews.com. From the report: Speaking at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit here, as the keynote of a half-day track on earth and space applications, Blue Origin Senior Vice President Rob Meyerson offered a few updates on the development of the company's suborbital vehicle. "We plan to start flying our first test passengers soon," he said after showing a video of a previous New Shepard flight at the company's West Texas test site. All of the New Shepard flights to date have been without people on board, but the company has said in the past it would fly its personnel on the vehicle in later tests. He also offered a timetable for selling tickets. "We expect to start selling tickets in 2019," he said, but did not disclose a price. Further reading:
Gizmodo.
This really is the most amazing news I have heard in months. Kudos to Bezos in pushing humanity forward.
People have been saying stuff like this for years, I'll believe it when I see it. Bezos is a slimeball.
I am probably not going to risk my life on these...
Maybe I would buy a few tickets for my rivals.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
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Just like the airlines have been doing for nearly a century?
Granted, Blue Origin's don't go anywhere and have a higher peak altitude.
- at sea.
The whole FA talks about "selling tickets" next year, but says absolutely nothing about when the purchasers would actually be able to USE them...
Not going to start holding my breath yet.
Which "soon" is this (in order of fast to never)?
I'm selling tickets for the trip to Jupiter on the Discovery. Get 'em while they last!
It's amazing how skeptical people here on Slashdot are when it's not an Elon Musk venture.
Now if it were SpaceX, there would be posts about how awesome it's going to be and how Elon is such an innovative genius. How HE is pushing the bounds of private space flight and innovating and disrupting the whole government controlled space business - all by his lonesome self.
Is the Blue Origin spacecraft better designed than Amazon web pages?
Being more clear: I should say that I don't see any reason to be particularly negative about Jeff Bezos as a person. It is, however, my opinion that he is not managing Amazon sufficiently. Three examples:
1) While a customer is reviewing a product, Amazon tries to sell other products.
2) There are a lot of sellers on Amazon who try to take advantage of customers.
3) Often products are presented with insufficient explanation.
Question: Will Blue Origin, a sub-orbital spaceflight company, be better managed than Amazon? If passengers on Blue Origin want to avoid death, Blue Origin must be extremely well managed. (Blue Origin craft don't have nearly enough power to go into orbit.)
Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post and it has done well: How Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos reinvented The Washington Post, the 140-year-old newspaper he bought for $250 million. (Paywalled.)
However, I don't see the kind of extremely detailed management in activities connected with Jeff Bezos that is necessary for safe spaceflight.
Quote from that Business Insider article: "Bezos liked the opportunity so much that he didn't do any due diligence and just signed the first $250 million offer sheet that came from Graham."
An orange Ape comes to mind. I'd prefer something that leaves him in outer space, but suborbital with a chance a burning during re-entry is good enough for me.
I'm not sure what the point of New Shepard is besides a sub-scale prototype for their New Glen. You only get a few minutes of weightlessness at the cost of what is most likely well over a hundred thousand dollars. You can get way more time (in 25 second increments) in a single vomit comet flight for only around $5k. I have a hard time believing they'll be able to keep ticket sales up as the wow factor is going to wear out pretty quickly and all you're going to be left with is four minutes of bumping into other people while floating around in a large walk in closet. Orbital trips to a decently equipped facility would draw a lot more people, but pricing there can't be too outrageous either.
You are saying that Amazon makes more money if it is managed in an abusive way. I don't agree. Over several years, abusive or uncaring behavior toward customers is likely to damage Amazon's reputation permanently.
Amazon is allowed to be abusive, in my opinion. Part of Amazon's problem is severe lack of attention to detail.
The question in this Slashdot story: Would you fly into space with Blue Origin, owned by Jeff Bezos, when Bezos has shown a habitual lack of attention to detail? Does Blue Origin have some of the managerial sloppiness of Amazon? If it does, people who fly with Blue Origin are more likely to die as a result of spacecraft failure during the flight.