--- title: "Jeff Bezos: New Shepard Will Launch First People Into Space “This Year”" description: "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to send its first passengers to space as soon as this year aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket." date: "2019-02-23" modified: "2019-02-23" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/jeff-bezos-new-shepard-launch-this-year" categories: - "Future Society" - "Jeff Bezos" - "Off-World" - "Space" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "blue origin" - "jeff bezos" - "new glenn" - "new shepard" --- # Jeff Bezos: New Shepard Will Launch First People Into Space “This Year” ![Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to send its first passengers to space as soon as this year aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.]() *\Image: Blue Origin\* ## Race to Space Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos wants to send its first passengers to space as soon as this year. Bezos spoke during a private event at the Yale Club in New York City, [*Business Insider* reports](). "This year. This is the first time I've ever been saying, "this year." For a few years, I've been saying, "next year," Bezos told Jeff Foust, senior staff writer at *Space News*, during the event. The billionaire's private space tourism company Blue Origins has been making some big strides towards that goal in recent years. Its flagship suborbital vehicle New Shepard reached the so-called Kármán line (62 miles or 100 km), widely agreed to be the edge of outer space, for the first time during a test flight in 2015. That's a fair bit higher than Virgin Galactic's recent efforts to reach space with its SpaceShipTwo space plane, which [reached a new maximum altitude]() of 55.85 miles (89.9 km) yesterday. ## Fighting Words "One of the issues that Virgin Galactic will have to address, eventually, is that they are not flying above the Kármán Line, not yet," Bezos [told *Space News*]() during a Wednesday luncheon in New York. "I think one of the things they will have to figure out how to get above the Karman Line." Blue Origin's much bigger New Glenn rocket is a far more capable rocket that is supposed to reach low Earth orbit (hundreds to thousands of kilometers above the Kármán line). The company is aiming for a [2021 test flight]() from Cape Canaveral in Florida. But Blue Origin wants to eventually go beyond Earth orbit as well. Their goal is to complete a lunar landing mission [before 2023](). **READ MORE:** [Bezos emphasizes altitude advantage of New Shepard over SpaceShipTwo]() \[*Space News*\] ***More on Blue Origin: [New Animation Shows Off Blue Origin’s Redesigned Heavy Load Rocket]()*** ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()