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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.
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
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.
Strictly speaking, London Tube sells suborbital flight (with orbital height just below 6,371 km) since 1863. They have a reasonable fare policy, if you are interested.
Which "soon" is this (in order of fast to never)?
Does the London Tube actually completely lift off from the rails at some point? That seems like it would extremely bad design, and absolutely required to call it "flight", though I suppose any mag-lev train would qualify.
But to honestly call it suborbital flight you need to leave the atmosphere. Though I suppose you could argue that the normal term is suborbital spaceflight, and by using a non-standard term you can define it to mean whatever you want.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
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."
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.