November 23, 2024

Jeff Bezos To Travel to Space With Brother and Blue Origin Auction Winner in July

Blue Origin #BlueOrigin

Jeff Bezos wearing a suit and tie: Jeff Bezos speaking at an event in Maryland, September 2018. The Amazon CEO is also the founder of Blue Origin. © Alex Wong/Getty Jeff Bezos speaking at an event in Maryland, September 2018. The Amazon CEO is also the founder of Blue Origin.

Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has announced that Bezos and his brother Mark will be among the three people to launch aboard the company’s first human flight next month.

Blue Origin is currently holding an auction in which people are vying for one seat on the company’s New Shepard spacecraft on July 20.

Some 6,000 people from 143 countries have already put forward bids. The highest offer is currently $2,800,000.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Blue Origin said the winning bidder would be joined aboard the rocket by the two Bezos brothers.

The Amazon CEO posted a video to Instagram in which he offers his brother a seat on the upcoming flight. Mark Bezos said he was “awestruck” at being offered a place and that he wasn’t even expecting Jeff to be aboard the first flight.

New Shepard is Blue Origin’s reusable launch vehicle, named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space. It is designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The July flight will take around 11 minutes.

This is a breaking story. More details to come…

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