Jeff Bezos spends $ 1 billion a year on Blue Origin development.

By 2017, commercial space flights have become a reality. Now there is Ilon Musk ahead with his SpaceX, however, the real world Tony Stark has its competitors.

Thus, Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of the Blue Origin project at the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, said he was selling $ 1 billion worth of his shares to Amazon every year and invested the proceeds in his own space project. Unlike Mask with his contracts with NASA and the support of investors, the Bezos project largely exists for the billionaire’s own money. At the same time, Bezos doesn’t have to run out in front of “money bags” in the hope of getting another investment round: the billionaire’s fortune is estimated at $ 72 billion (2017), so at current expenses Blue Origin will continue to develop as long as the businessman is alive or doesn’t give up.

Jeff Bezos is the head and founder of one of the most successful online trading platforms of the day - Amazon. In fact, he is one of the richest people on the planet, second only to Bill Gates with his record $ 90 billion and some businessmen from the real and financial sectors of the economy.
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The Blue Origin project was launched back in 2000. In fact, Bezos became the first billionaire who turned his eyes towards space, and not with the goal of launching commercial satellites, but with the desire to simplify and cheapen flights, which will allow humanity to get closer to the stars. The original concept of Blue Origin implied commercial launches for the purpose of space tourism at more adequate prices than NASA. In 2002, Ilon Musk joined the “club” of Bezos, founding SpaceX, and in 2004 businessman Richard Branson took on commercial space flights.

Unlike Mask, who chose the path of symbiosis with NASA, Bezos chose to develop Blue Origin according to his own strength and capabilities. At some point, the businessman acknowledged the Mask approach in terms of reuse of the first stages of the missiles effective and also began work in this direction.

“If we can significantly reduce the cost of space flights, it will untie the hands of many entrepreneurs. You will see the creation, you will see the dynamics and creativity, you will see everything that I have witnessed on the Internet over the past 20 years, ”said Bezos at the space symposium in Colorado Springs.

The main reason Musk, not Bezos, was always on the ear with his launches - these are real missile launches. Ilona and SpaceX need to fulfill contracts with NASA and other orders in order to stay afloat and continue to exist. Blue Origin under the wing of Bezos avoided such pressure, so engineers are working on the creation of rockets and make experimental launches without too much noise.

In September 2016, Blue Origin officially presented to the public one of their developments - the two-stage rocket New Glenn, which should compete with SpaceX's Falcons in commercial cargo deliveries.


However, New Glenn did not cancel the earlier Blue Origin project in space tourism called New Shepard. For example, in October 2016, engineers conducted a very spectacular test of the crew rescue system during launch. The rocket is designed for the rescue of the head capsule, in which the crew and passengers will be accommodated. After artificially creating an “emergency” situation at an altitude of about 5,000 meters, the head portion of the capsule was shot off from the launch vehicle and accelerated away from it along a different path.

It is necessary to note the fact that, in contrast to the returned SpaceX stages, which began to fly again literally the other day, the New Shepard stage, which took part in the simulation of an emergency with the ejection of a capsule, was launched at that time for the fifth time. According to Bezos, after the tests, the stage was retired, although in theory, after maintenance, it could be used again.

In this case, it is incorrect to compare Falcon 9 and New Shepard. The Mask rocket faces completely different tasks. Take at least the specific impulse that the Falcon 9 payload requires to bring cargo into orbit, while the Blue Origin tourism project is still limited to 10-11 minutes of suborbital flight. New Shepard is equipped with six seats for tourists and, according to Bezos, the first flights can take place as early as 2018.

According to the company's motto - “Gradatim ferociter”, which can be translated as “step by step, inevitable” from Latin, Jeff Bezos adheres to the tactics of measured, step-by-step expansion. According to the businessman, mass suborbital flights are the first step, the key to putting millions of people into orbit for life and work in space. Space tourism at an adequate price has several advantages in the eyes of Bezos. The main thing is to gain invaluable experience in landing the first stage of the New Shepard, which Blue Origin can later use on the New Glenn rocket. The final ticket price for a 10-minute suborbital flight is not yet known, but it will probably be near the $ 250,000 mark — it was for so much that Richard Branson was selling seats on his problematic Virgin Galactic device.

Bezos’s motto, however, does not prevent Blue Origin from redistributing efforts. The unique experience from the launches and return of the New Shepard steps is good, but the development of the New Glenn launch vehicle will require an estimated $ 2.5 billion in the coming years. First of all, Jeff is a businessman, so his rocket already has a commercial delivery client cargo - telecommunications company Eutelsat, for which New Glenn will put satellites into orbit. This contract will cover part of the cost of developing and building aircraft and will accelerate the development of the industry. It is expected that the first commercial launches of New Glenn will take place two years after the launch of tourist launches of New Shepard - in 2020.