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$200K to go to space? Blue Origin downplays claim

An artist’s conception shows passengers looking through one of the windows in Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spaceship. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space venture, Blue Origin, is playing down reports that a suborbital space trip on its New Shepard rocket ship could cost $200,000 to $300,000.

“We have not set ticket pricing and have had no serious discussions inside of Blue on this topic,” Blue Origin said in an emailed statement. “We will begin selling tickets sometime after our first human flights and are focused on developing New Shepard.”

Blue Origin has flown eight uncrewed flight tests of the New Shepard spacecraft, which consists of a reusable booster that flies itself back to a landing and a crew capsule that floats back down at the end of a parachute.

Further uncrewed flight tests reaching as high as 100 kilometers, the internationally recognized boundary of space, are expected in the months ahead. Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told GeekWire in April that the company is aiming to start flying people by the end of this year.

Those people won’t be commercial customers, however.

Get the full story on GeekWire.

By Alan Boyle

Mastermind of Cosmic Log, contributor to GeekWire and Universe Today, author of "The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference," past president of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

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