Jeff Bezos is heading to space on one of his Blue Origin rockets on 20 July this year. He’s taking his brother with him, because family dinners get awkward otherwise. But there was another seat up for grabs, going to the highest bidder. Well, the bids are in and the (so far) mysterious passenger was willing to part with $28 million (R385 million) in order to secure a set next to Jeff and Mark.
Blue Origin of the species
The seat on the reusable New Shepard’s Crew Capsule was sold at an auction this weekend, with some twenty bidders vying for the seat. You can check out a replay of the actual process in the embed above, but what it boils down to is that bidding started at $4.8 million (R66 million) before rocketing up to its final price. The sum is being donated to Blue Origin’s nonprofit charity, Club For The Future.
Amazingly, the amount paid is more or less a bargain. The passengers are only set to experience weightlessness just above the K Line — a little over 100km in the air — before returning to Earth. If you actually want to enter orbit around the planet, you’re looking at about double the final price paid for a seat on Blue Origin.
The passenger will only be revealed at a later stage — company representatives blame paperwork for now — and there’s one more seat available on the 20 July rocket. That will be announced later, but it’s unknown whether that seat will be paid for, donated, or will include one of Blue Origin’s staff. It’d make a heck of an Employee of the Year prize, though.
Source: The Verge