Private space company Blue Origin is eyeing crewed test flights of its reusable suborbital space vehicle starting 2017, its founder Jeff Bezos revealed Tuesday during a press tour of its Seattle manufacturing facility.
Bezos, who cited a target date on Blue Origin’s commercial flights for the first time, also said that thousands of individuals have shown interest in paying for a space trip aboard a suborbital craft.
“We’ll probably fly test pilots in 2017, and if we’re successful then I’d imagine putting paying astronauts on in 2018,” Bezos said.
The company’s first reusable rocket went missing in April 2015 while being tested, although the capsule went back safely to the ground. A second ship will undergo two test flights, with Blue Origin now producing its next two vehicles, now involving windows for its paying flight customers.
Blue Origin is expecting to create six New Shepard vehicles designed for self-flying six persons to over 62 miles above Earth, which can offer the weightlessness experience for a couple of minutes and a view of the planet against space.
The Amazon.com founder is now channeling resources — to the tune of billions of dollars — into around 600 employees and high-tech machinery for the mission in the Seattle facility, formerly a Boeing airplane parts site.
While Bezos is expecting his childhood dreams of spaceflight to eventually turn profitable, Blue Origin is not yet taking deposits. Thus it is still unclear whether the interest in space travel will turn into actual sales.
According to Bezos, he has already invested over $500 million in the company he launched in 2000, which is also on the way to employing around 1,200 people in 2017.
Other companies are already charging for commercial spaceflight. Virgin Galactic of renowned mogul Richard Branson is flying people on its six-passenger SpaceShipTwo for $250,000. The spaceship is expected to start test flights soon.
Right now, the real money for Blue Origin is in selling rocket engines. The firm is supplying them to United Launch Alliance and Orbital ATK.
Part of Bezos’ vision, too, is to make space launch costs low enough to eventually make a Mars colony possible. Like other private entities like SpaceX, Blue Origin’s goal is to make spaceship reusable as one cannot afford to throw the hardware away, Bezos added.
