Jeff Bezos, the ex-chief executive of Amazon, the e-commerce giant, went to space aboard the New Shepard rocket ship. The rocket rose more than 65 miles into the sky in a spacecraft built by Mr. Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin. The rocket ship reached a maximum altitude of around 107km and then descended to a spot in the West Texas desert.
Mr. Jeff Bezos, accompanied by his brother Mark Bezos, a senior vice president at Robin Hood, a charity based in New York, completed the epic journey to space. Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pioneer of the space race, and Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old student, were the other crew members on this historic ride. In the 1960s, Ms. Wally Funk was one of the members of a group of women named Mercury 13. Though these women underwent the same screening tests as their male counterparts, they never got the opportunity to fly under the US national space program. It is reported that Blue Origin held a public auction for a seat on its first flight with Mr. Bezos, which went for $28 million.
Last week, Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur, flew in a rocket plane from his company Virgin Galactic and beat Mr. Bezos to space.
Jeff Bezos recently resigned as chief executive of Amazon as he wished to concentrate on his other ventures, including his company Blue Origin. Mr. Bezos announced in 2017 that to fund his space venture, he would sell $1 billion of Amazon stock a year. Blue Origin has already pursued business opportunities, such as launching satellites for the Department of Defense and attempting to win contracts for a moon lander for NASA astronauts.
Blue Origin, founded by Mr. Bezos more than 20 years ago, is thought to be a more significant contender in the future space economy. Mr. Bezos has a vision of humanity’s future influenced by Gerard K. O’Neill, a Princeton physicist who proposed in the 1970s that mega cylinder-shaped space colonies would support more industry and people than are possible on Earth.