Blue Origin’s month-long auction for space trip aboard New Shepard ends with a closing price of $28 million

Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Tech billionaire Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin’s month-long auction for a trip to the edge of space aboard New Shepard has ended with a closing price of $28 million.

A single seat aboard the New Shepard crew capsule, which is known as the RSS First Step Crew Capsule, went up for auction earlier this month, starting with a sealed bidding drawing “more than 5,200 bidders from 136 countries”.

People were bidding as high as $2.8 million for a 10-minute experience on the space tourism rocket, expected to be launched on July 20. The month-long open-bidding phase for New Shepard’s seat closed on June 10, entering a live, online auction round on June 12. The bid price went up from $4.8 million to $28 million in under ten minutes.

The winner will be able to book a seat on the flight with Bezos, his brother Mark, and one other passenger on the flight, which will mark the company’s first mission of flying humans. The identity of the winner will be kept secret for few weeks.

The auction took place in a Boston, Massachusetts facility owned by RR Auction, the hosting company. The earnings will go to Blue Origin’s non-profit charity Club For The Future.

The five-storey-tall New Shepard rocket is designed to launch a crew capsule with seats for six approximately 340,000 feet into the sky toward the edge of space. Tourists can experience a few minutes of weightlessness in microgravity and witness super high-altitude views of the Earth.

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