We have very clearly entered the future, so why haven’t we gotten a chance to go to space yet? Well, if you’ve been dreaming about going to space your whole life, I’ve got some good news: we could be looking at the introduction of private space travel as early as 2018.
According to Huffington Post, Blue Origin, the commercial space venture of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, is planning on launching its first suborbital test flight, complete with human passengers, in 2017. Should this test prove to be a success, the company could start selling tickets for short trips into suborbit as soon as 2018.
“I only pursue things that I am passionate about,” Bezos said during a media tour of Blue Origin’s Seattle-based research and development site. Blue Origin has only opened its doors to the publicly very recently, specifically for the announcement that commercial spaceflight might be a reality far more quickly than we might have imagined.
Blue Origin has successfully launched and landed two unmanned spacecrafts since their formation in 2000. The 2017 suborbital flight test will mark the first time that the company has launched a manned spacecraft.
Though the company has yet to sell any tickets for spaceflight, they have expressed that they are confident that thousands of people would jump at the chance to see space.
Among them is NASA astronaut Scott Kelly, who expressed his excitement for this and the future of commercial space travel at a news conference.
“I think everyone should be able to go to space,” Kelly said at a news conference last week after returning from a nearly year-long stint aboard the International Space Station. “Maybe in the next 20 years, you’ll be able to just buy a cheap ticket, go for a little visit.”