Jeff Bezos has cashed out a lot of his stock over the past few weeks. She said the company’s president needed money for his space plans. But few would have expected that the richest man in the world would want to fly himself into space so quickly.
In a few weeks, the Amazon billionaire wants to quit. “I have dreamed of going into space since I was 5 years old. On July 20, I will be making this flight with my brother,” Bezos wrote on Instagram.
The founder of the online retailer posted a video of his admiration for space and asked his brother if he would like to join him on his space company’s Blue Origin flight. Until now, it was only known that Blue Origin wanted to bring people into space for the first time in July — the company also began auctioning one of the spaces to a space tourist. It was previously unknown that the President would also be on board for the premiere.
According to plans so far, the flight will take about ten minutes, of which passengers must spend four minutes above the Karmann Line, which is the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space. At an altitude of about a hundred kilometers, the crew on board the ship can experience weightlessness and observe the curvature of the Earth from space.
Current bid for all flights: $2.8 million
With his own stay in space, Bezos can also catch up to some extent with rival Elon Musk. The Amazon chief, who announced his withdrawal from the group’s summit in February, recently suffered a serious defeat against the Tesla pioneer and its space company, SpaceX. SpaceX was able to win a tender for a mission to NASA. They are supposed to return American astronauts to the moon.
The final bid for a seat in the Bezos astronaut capsule, which has large picture windows and can seat six people, is $2.8 million. The auction runs through June 12, and so far more than 5,200 bidders from 136 countries have applied for a seat in the cockpit.
The company was initially left open to whoever should take a seat in the remaining vacant seats. If a trip is too pricey for you, you can hope the show will be bigger soon: British billionaire Richard Branson is also planning to bring paying guests into space through Galactic Holdings.
Bezos founded Blue Origin about 20 years ago. In mid-April, the company tested its New Shepard rocket with an astronaut’s capsule. It reached an altitude of about 105 kilometers before returning to Earth. For the first time, the company’s employees are also training for some of the astronauts’ tasks before takeoff and after landing. However, the actual test flight remained unmanned – the New Shepard never flew with people on board.