Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the second richest man on Earth, will join the first manned mission of his Blue Origin spacecraft, scheduled for July 20th, just days after he steps down as CEO of Amazon, NBC News reports.
The crew will take off on the New Shepard spacecraft, a suborbital craft designed and manufactured by Bezos’s Blue Origin Federation. The booster rocket will push the crew cabin just over the Karman line, the point 100 kilometers above the Earth that is the designated point of space flight. The booster rocket will make a controlled landing; after three minutes in space, the crew capsule will make a parachute-assisted landing into the West Texas desert.
“You see the Earth from space, it changes you,” Jeff Bezos said in a video announcing his plan. “It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth. I want to go on this flight because it’s the thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
Bezos and his younger brother Mark will be part of the six person crew, which will consist of three pilot crew and an as-yet undetermined sixth passenger who will be determined by a bidding process. Currently, bids for the final seat are rumored to be at $2.8 million, with a final decision due in the next two weeks. The money gained through the auction will help fund the Club for the Future, a foundation that promotes STEM education.