Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin launches 10th test flight of space tourism rocket

Jeff Bezos’ rocket company, Blue Origin, completed a 10th test flight Wednesday of its suborbital launch vehicle and capsule, indicating the company is getting closer to launching paying customers into space.

Blue Origin said the test flight from a launch pad in West Texas “looks to have been wholly successful.”

The rocket, dubbed New Shepard, vaulted a capsule designed to carry up to six people into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. There were no humans on board, but Blue Origin brought in some revenue by flying a batch of research payloads for NASA.

The capsule, which detaches from the rocket near the top of its flight path, climbed to more than 350,000 feet, or 66 miles, above Earth on Wednesday, according to initial data reported by Blue Origin during a webcast.

Passengers on board future flights will experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule falls back to Earth.

The New Shepard rocket is designed to reignite its engine and land upright on the ground, while the capsule deploys three parachutes to slow its decent.

The rocket is fully automated and reusable, and the New Shepard that launched Thursday had previously flown three test flights. Another version of New Shepard flew five times, while the first New Shepard test vehicle that was constructed crashed after attempting a landing in 2015.

Blue Origin is squared up to compete directly with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic in the suborbital space tourism market. Neither company has begun flying customers, but they both have plans to start sometime this year.

Virgin Galactic — which plans to use a rocket-powered plane to fly groups of people to the edge of space -— conducted its first test flight to reach more than 50 miles above Earth last month, earning commercial astronaut wings for the two pilots aboard the plane.

Branson told CNN Business last month that the success put the company on track to begin flying passengers in “five, six months time.” About 600 people have reserved a Virgin Galactic ticket, worth between $200,000 and $250,000.

Blue Origin, which has kept much of its development progress under wraps, has not started selling tickets nor announced a price point.

Bezos has said he is funding Blue Origin by selling about $1 billion worth of his Amazon stock each year.