Blue Origin to Start Selling Space Tourism Tickets Next Year

Blue Origin always had space tourism as one of the main goals of its spaceflight program, and next year, it’s going to start selling tickets. The private space company started by Jeff Bezos appears to be close to offering sub-orbital launches. Instead of going to the moon or docking with the International Space Station, however, passengers will basically be onboard really high observation decks.

This development was announced by Blue Origin senior vice president Rob Meyerson, who spoke at the Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit, which was held in Washington, D.C. recently. The news was initially covered by Space News, indicating that passengers might be able to board launches quite soon.

As Fortune reports, Blue Origin is still set to test a few things out, with plans to conduct flight tests with an actual crew already in the works. Unfortunately, the prices of the tickets for the flights have not been revealed yet. Suffice it to say, however, it might be worth expecting that it’s going to be expensive.

In this particular scenario, the SpaceX rival will at least one-up its much more prominent competitor in one area. The private space company of Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently a long way off from sending manned missions, even though its rockets have been proven relatively safe already.

It’s also worth pointing out that what passengers will be paying for is the experience that was reserved only for astronauts up until that point. They won’t be going to the moon, nor will they be landing on asteroids. What they can expect is to see the planets from space with their own eyes and be among the first civilians to reach space in a commercial fashion.

With regards to the costs, Futurism notes that the company is still likely trying to figure out that particular tidbit. This would be the first service of its kind after all. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration and not all of them will be.