Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Launch to Space: When and How to Watch - The New York Times

The New Shepard rocket is on the pad and Bezos’ trip to space is expected to launch on schedule?

What is the New Shepard rocket and what will it do?

Another week, another billionaire with a rocket company going to space.

Last week, it was Richard Branson earning his astronaut wings riding a space plane from Virgin Galactic, a company he founded 14 years ago, to an altitude of more than 50 miles above the skies of New Mexico.

On Tuesday, it will be Jeff Bezos, the richest human being in the universe, who will strap into a capsule built by his rocket company, Blue Origin, and blast off even higher, to more than 62 miles above West Texas.

Blue Origin is aiming for the rocket to take off at 9 a.m.

Early on Tuesday, Blue Origin released video footage showing the rocket being rolled out of its hangar and stood up at the launchpad, and said the launch was sticking to the planned schedule so far.

Bezos’ company in recent weeks, those competitors wished him and Blue Origin well in the hours ahead of the launch.

Virgin Galactic on Monday bid Mr.

New Shepard, the Blue Origin spacecraft, is named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space.

Unlike Virgin Galactic’s space plane, New Shepard is more of a traditional rocket, taking off vertically.

Blue Origin has launched New Shepard 15 times — all without anyone onboard — and the capsule landed safely every time.

The rationale is that emerging space companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic need a “learning period” to try out designs and procedures and that too much regulation, too soon would stifle innovation that would lead to better, more efficient designs.

At 82, Wally Funk will be the oldest person to ever have gone to space.

None of those women have gone into space.

Six years later he founded Blue Origin, the company behind the spaceship he is flying in on Tuesday.

He would typically spend a day a week — usually Wednesdays — focused on Blue Origin, and in 2017 he announced that he would sell $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund the space venture.

“The only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is by converting my Amazon winnings into space travel,” he said, couching his investment as a form of philanthropy, after he had been criticized for not doing more to share his wealth.

Bezos said he wanted to devote more focus on Blue Origin and his other ventures.

“Our early flights are going for a very good price,” Bob Smith, the chief executive of Blue Origin, said during a news conference on Sunday

Ariane Cornell, director of astronaut and orbital sales at Blue Origin, said that two additional flights are planned for this year

Cornell said anyone interested in buying a ticket should email Blue Origin

Virgin Galactic, the other company offering suborbital flights, has about 600 people who have already bought tickets

The price was originally $200,000 and later raised to $250,000, but Virgin Galactic stopped sales in 2014 after a crash of its first space plane during a test flight

Virgin Galactic officials say they will resume sales later this year, and the price will likely be higher than $250,000

Blue Origin is developing a larger rocket, New Glenn (named after John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth), to launch satellites and other payloads

The rocket engine that Blue Origin developed for New Glenn will also power a competing rocket, Vulcan, built by the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing

Blue Origin — as well as Dynetics, the third company in the competition — protested NASA’s decision with the Government Accountability Office