It’s also won government contracts to take payloads into suborbital space on its aircraft, and others for using NASA’s technology. For one, at least 19 patents are registered under Blue Origin, including one for technology that will aid the takeoff and landing of a vertical craft. Corporate filings from Bezos’s other company, Amazon, disclosed that Blue Origin bought $4.2 million in unnamed consumer goods from the online retailer last year, in addition to the direct funding from the CEO.

In that way, it’s much closer to SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, which keeps its plans relatively close to the space vest.īut it doesn’t operate in a hermitage. Unlike rival Virgin Galactic, it doesn’t publish any filings that document its financial state or the risks to the company.

Here’s what we know about the upcoming Blue Origin flight: A vacuum of information, almostīlue Origin-the space company Bezos founded in 2000-is private, if not secretive. and the Soviet Union, is now funded by private capital and still could have decades more of development.

The new space race, some 60 years after the Cold War competition between the U.S. Bezos is set to be the second billionaire space jockey, after Richard Branson rode a Virgin Galactic spacecraft on July 11 past where Earth’s atmosphere ends and the final frontier begins.

Jeff bezos blue origin