{"id":17926,"date":"2019-10-02T22:58:50","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T14:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/blue-origins-ceo-says-first-space-trips-on-new-shepard-will-cost-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars\/"},"modified":"2019-10-02T22:58:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T14:58:50","slug":"blue-origins-ceo-says-first-space-trips-on-new-shepard-will-cost-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/blue-origins-ceo-says-first-space-trips-on-new-shepard-will-cost-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Origin\u2019s CEO says first space trips on New Shepard will cost \u2018hundreds of thousands of dollars\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_454072\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-454072\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-454072\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181010-bobsmith2-630x501.jpg\" alt=\"Bue Origin CEO Bob Smith\" width=\"630\" height=\"501\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181010-bobsmith2-630x501.jpg 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181010-bobsmith2-768x611.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/181010-bobsmith2-1260x1002.jpg 1260w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-454072\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith shows a video of a BE-4 rocket engine firing during the Aerospace Futures Alliance Summit in 2018. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture has always shied away from saying how much it will cost to fly to the edge of the final frontier on its New Shepard suborbital spaceship.<\/p>\n<p>But today, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith hinted at a ballpark figure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s going to not be cheap,\u201d Smith said at TechCrunch\u2019s Disrupt SF conference.<\/p>\n<p>Although he stressed that the price for passengers hasn\u2019t yet been published, he indicated that Blue Origin now has a price range in mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny new technology is never cheap, whether you\u2019re talking about the first IBM computers or what we actually see today,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut it\u2019ll be actually in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for people to go, initially.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Smith added that over time, \u201cwe\u2019re going to get this down to the point where middle-class people\u201d can afford a ticket to space.<\/p>\n<p>Blue Origin is based in Kent, Wash., south of Seattle \u2014 and that\u2019s where New Shepard\u2019s crew capsules and boosters are being built. But the spacecraft are being tested at the company\u2019s space facility in West Texas.<\/p>\n<p>So far, 11 uncrewed test flights have been executed. The next autonomous test flight is coming up \u201crelatively soon,\u201d Smith said, and will have scientific payloads on board. But Smith acknowledged that the first flight to carry people probably won\u2019t take place until next year.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Smith told CNBC that Blue Origin was being careful about making the transition to crewed flight because it wanted to make sure the launch system was sufficiently robust.<\/p>\n<p>The first people to fly are likely to be Blue Origin employees, and in the past, Smith and other executives have said they won\u2019t name a price and start taking reservations until those initial test flights with insiders have begun.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Blue Origin Astronaut Experience\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-CT5mJ6KMTQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In contrast, Virgin Galactic has been making reservations and taking deposits for years, with the ticket price currently set at $250,000. Virgin Galactic is currently in the process of shifting its base of flight operations from California\u2019s Mojave Air and Space Port to New Mexico\u2019s Spaceport America.<\/p>\n<p>This week, the Australian Financial Review quoted Virgin Galactic\u2019s commercial director, Stephen Attenborough, as saying that customer flights would begin in 2020, and that the price tag would rise once the company starts flying the more than 600 people currently on its reservation list.<\/p>\n<p>Attenborough said he hoped the price would eventually come down, as the frequency of flights goes from once or twice a month to a few times a week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve done a huge amount of testing, but this will be the first time we take paying passengers, so we\u2019ll give ourselves plenty of time between flights,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re vertically integrated so we build our own spaceships, and we\u2019ve got two more in the production line back in Mojave, so we\u2019ll launch a second service at the end of next year, then a third, fourth and fifth, all at Spaceport America.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the New Shepard suborbital space program, Blue Shepard is working on an orbital-class rocket known as New Glenn, which will be assembled in Florida and launched from a Cape Canaveral pad.<\/p>\n<p>A critical design review for the New Glenn rocket is due to be completed by the end of this year, in preparation for the first commercial flight in 2021, Smith said.<\/p>\n<p>He said Blue Origin expects New Glenn to be an important element in the space-industry ecosystem, just as the internet has been an important element in the ecosystem that gave rise to Amazon and other online retailers. That observation echoes what Smith\u2019s boss, Jeff Bezos, has said on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s literally dozens and dozens of very good and profitable ideas that just literally need the capability to actually get to space,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith shows a video of a BE-4 rocket engine firing during the Aerospace Futures Alliance Summit in 2018. (GeekWire Photo \/ Alan Boyle) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin space venture has always shied away from saying how much it will cost to fly to the edge of the final frontier [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[509,4536,1250,493],"class_list":["post-17926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-blue-origin","tag-bob-smith","tag-new-shepard","tag-space-tourism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17926"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17926\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}