Blue Origin’s New Shepard space vehicle is still a work in progress, but one thing reportedly coming into focus is the ticket price.
Jeff Bezos’s passion project will charge passengers between $200,000 to $300,000 for a ride during its first trips into space next year, according to anonymous sources cited by Reuters.
The New Shepard is designed to autonomously fly six passengers more than 62 miles above Earth’s surface, let them giggle around in the weightless atmosphere, snap an Instagram pic of the curvature of the planet through its large windows, and then return to terrestrial life via parachutes.
If the Reuters sources are accurate, the price tag would be higher than the $100,000 to $200,000 range that was bandied about last year. However, it appears to be in line with the going rate for a trip to the stars. Virgin Galactic is reportedly charging $250,000 for passengers who haven’t already bought tickets. That is significantly less than booking a room at the space hotel, whose price tag starts at $9.5 million per person.
We reached out to Blue Origin for comment and will update if we hear back.
As for when passengers can cash in those tickets to ride, that is still TBD. There have been eight test flights so far, but none involved humans. Reuters reports that Blue Origin may be planning its first manned test flights soon, and start selling tickets next year. However, the first passengers will likely be Blue Origin employees.
In the meantime, there’s plenty of time to start hacking the lottery.
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