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posted by martyb on Sunday June 13 2021, @04:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the buying-your-way-into-the-history-books dept.

Sold! Bidder pays $28m for spare seat on space flight with Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin has sold the spare seat of the company's 20 July New Shepard space rocket blast-off for $28m, the company announced on Saturday.

With 20 active bidders starting at $4.8m during the 10-minute auction, bids escalated in the final three minutes of the sale. Initially, some 7,600 people registered to bid from 159 countries, the company said. The winner, whose identity has not been announced, will join the Amazon founder Bezos and his brother Mark on the flight.

The 11-minute, automated flight – the company's 16th but first carrying humans – will lift off from Van Horn, Texas. The capsule will carry as many as six passengers, though the company has not yet revealed who else will be onboard.

[...] The company has said the auction price will be donated to Blue Origin's foundation, Club for the Future, whose stated mission "is to inspire future generations to pursue careers in Stem (science, technology, engineering, and math) and to help invent the future of life in space".

Also at The Verge and BBC.

Previously: Jeff Bezos' Vision for Space: One Trillion Population in the Solar System
Jeff Bezos Will Fly on Blue Origin's First Human Spaceflight

Related: Branson May Make a Last-Ditch Effort to Beat Bezos Into Space


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by esperto123 on Sunday June 13 2021, @11:54AM (1 child)

    by esperto123 (4303) on Sunday June 13 2021, @11:54AM (#1144785)

    Whomever bought the ticket is not paying to fly, is paying to have access to Bezos for several hours or even days, to take pictures and videos together with him all over the news and etc. the flight is just a side event, this is pretty much like those benefit dinners for the uber rich that on paper is for donating money to charity but in practice is for network building.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 13 2021, @06:14PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday June 13 2021, @06:14PM (#1144840) Journal

    Getting close to Jeff Bezos pays off. Just ask MacKenzie Scott and Lauren Sánchez.

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