In a move to counter rival space-faring company SpaceX, Blue Origin has announced it’s plan to have tourists in space “within 18 months,” according to a statement sent out by the company.
Image from Space Flight Insider
It followed up by specifying that the people sent to space will in fact be everyday citizens, not trained astronauts.
Whether that means true space flight or not (Blue Origin’s specialty is low-orbit, near weightless flight) remains to be seen.
This announcement came from Thursday’s meeting of the National Space Council, an organizations reinstated by Trump after 20 years of inactivity.
Blue Origin was started and is currently backed by Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, who funnels roughly $1 billion into the company a year, Reuters reports.
While this plan (assuming it’s the low-orbit flight) isn’t as ambitious as SpaceX’s plan to colonize Mars by 2024, it still marks an interesting shift to more extraterrestrial developments.
Sources: Reuters, CNN, Futurism, Inverse
Image: NASA, Space Flight Insider
For more entertainment related content, visit us at Byte Bsu!
