Sealed bidding, in which aspiring astronauts can bid any amount
on the auction website without any other bidders knowing, starts today. On May
19, the highest bid will become public to the other participants, and
subsequent bidders must exceed the highest amount to stay in the auction. The
contest will conclude with a live online auction June 12, Blue Origin said.
Proceeds from the auction will go toward Blue Origin’s Club
for the Future foundation, which promotes science, technology, engineering and
math careers.
“Not only will this winner be opening the doors for future
space explorers to walk through, but they’ll be inspiring and also supporting
the next generation,” Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s director of astronaut
sales, told reporters Wednesday.
The auction winner would arrive at the company’s West Texas
launch site four days before the flight for training on how to get in and out
of the capsule, emergency procedures and other things. On launch day, the
winner will don a flight suit, walk up the staircase to the capsule and then
launch, experiencing about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of space
before the capsule returns to Earth buoyed by parachutes.
Terms and conditions of the contest state that the winner
must sign a Blue Origin nondisclosure agreement and a form from the Federal
Aviation Administration that acknowledges the risks of spaceflight. The winner
must also be 5-foot to 6-foot-4 in height, weigh 110 to 223 pounds, and be able
to dress themselves in the flight suit and climb the launch tower’s seven
flights of stairs in less than 90 seconds, among other requirements.
The Jeff Bezos-led company has been flight testing its New
Shepard rocket and capsule system for years. Its most recent flight test was
last month, when the Kent, Wash., company tested some astronaut operations by
doing a dress rehearsal of sorts with employees entering and exiting the
capsule before and after launch.
No employee stayed aboard during that flight — just a dummy
named Mannequin Skywalker.
”After the last flight, we said, ‘It’s time. Let’s put
people on board,’” Cornell said.
Blue Origin will eventually compete with Virgin Galactic, a
suborbital space tourism company founded by British billionaire Richard
Branson. Virgin Galactic charged $250,000 for people who signed up early. The
company now says on its website that it will charge more than that for all
subsequent sign-ups but hasn’t settled on final pricing.
On Wednesday, Cornell declined to comment on Blue Origin’s
ticket prices for future seats or on specific details about the rest of the
July 20 flight crew. Although other people will be aboard the capsule, the
auctioned seat is the only one open for purchase on that flight, she said.
The company plans to launch a couple more crewed flights
before the end of the year. Active auction bidders will be “on our radar,” so
Blue Origin will know who to contact when it opens ticket sales, Cornell said.
She said the company has received a number of inquiries over the years from
people interested in buying seats.
Fundraisers offering a trip to space as the grand prize have
become popular as of late.
The Inspiration-4 mission, which will launch to space in a
SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, held a sweepstakes for charity that awarded one
seat to a winner. Participants were encouraged to donate at least $10 to St.
Jude Children’s Research Hospital to enter, but entrants could also join the
contest without paying money. The winner of that seat — Christopher Sembroski —
told the New York Times that he thought he had donated $50 in the auction, but
that a friend ended up winning the auction and transferred the seat to him.
That mission is being led by tech entrepreneur Jared
Isaacman, chief executive of Shift4 Payments, a payment company in Allentown,
Pa., and is set to launch toward the end of this year. It would be the first
time a crew of only private astronauts reaches orbit.
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