Blue Origin wants to follow up its three flights last year by blasting more than twice the number of people into space in 2022.
Jeff Bezos‘ space tourism company has so far flown 14 people to space across three flights, including the Amazon founder himself and Star Trek actor William Shatner.
CEO Bob Smith said he expects to ‘easily double’ that figure this year, but if Blue Origin is to do that it would likely need to have a second New Shepard rocket available and to slash the turnaround time between flights.
The spacecraft has a capacity of six people, but of the missions in July, October and December last year only the latter was launched with every seat occupied.
Ambitious: Blue Origin reportedly wants to fly twice the number of people into space this year as it did in 2021. Jeff Bezos’ company has so far flown 14 people to space across three flights
Star Trek actor William Shatner (left) and Blue Origin CEO Jeff Bezos (right) are among those who have flown to space on New Shepard. Blue Origin would likely need to have a second rocket available for use if it wants to meet the target of doubling its flights in 2022
Smith said the increase in launches will be enabled in part by a new vehicle that he said Blue Origin expects to bring into service this year.
Speaking during a presentation at the 24th Annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference last week, he added: ‘The market is robust. It’s very robust.
‘The challenge for Blue at this point is that we’re actually supply-limited. No business ever wants to be supply-limited when there’s robust demand,’ Smith said.
‘It’s incumbent on us to go build new vehicles, get them ready and safely go fly, and also safely get our launch cadence up.’
He would not say how many New Shepard launches would take place in 2022 but insisted that all crewed flights will have the maximum of six people on board.
Blue Origin has not yet revealed how much a seat on New Shepard costs, or how many people have paid and are waiting to be blasted into space.
However, Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun successfully bid $28 million (£20.5 million) to join the first crewed flight of New Shepard last July, only to have to pull out of that initial date.
He still plans to make the trip to space towards the end of 2022.
Blue Origin told SpaceNews that this auction provided a sense of how its rich customer base prices the value of a trip to space.
‘We’ve learned a lot of interesting things about the market over the past year,’ said Audrey Powers, vice-president of New Shepard flight and mission operations at Blue Origin, who also flew on New Shepard in October.
By comparison, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin’s big competitor in the space tourism business, has just reopened seat sales for $450,000 (£330,000).
This includes a $150,000 (£110,000) deposit to secure a spot in line to go to space — on a first come, first served basis.
Operating out of Spaceport America, near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the firm plans to send its first paying customers to space before the end of this year.
Founder Sir Richard Branson flew to space last year as part of a test flight to show its horizontal take-off space plane, VSS Unity, and originally hoped to start commercial operations in the first quarter of this year.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard is made up of a rocket and nose cone with room for up to six passengers to travel up to 65 miles above the Earth
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic announced earlier this month that it would sell tickets at $450,000 apiece for a seat on the firm’s horizontal take-off space plane, VSS Unity (pictured)
But in October Virgin Galactic announced it was entering an ‘enhancement period’ to make safety upgrades to its fleet, and pushed back a planned test flight with the Italian Air Force.
In doing so, this further delayed the start of its commercial space flights.
There are 700 ‘Future Astronauts’ currently on a waiting list to go up to 50 miles above the Earth, some of whom have been waiting more than a decade.
‘We plan to have our first 1,000 customers on board at the start of commercial service later this year, providing an incredibly strong foundation as we begin regular operations and scale our fleet,’ said CEO Michael Colglazier in a statement.
Virgin Galactic is also building the second of its space planes, which will each carry up to six tourists and two professional pilots.
In December last year, Bezos’ Blue Origin launched its third space tourism flight from Launch Site One in the West Texas town of Van Horn.
The seven-minute flight held six passengers, including retired American football player and Good Morning America co-host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley — the eldest daughter of Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly to space.
The other four, who paid a high price for the experience, included space industry executive and philanthropist Dylan Taylor, investor Evan Dick, and Bess Ventures founder Lane Bess and Cameron Bess, who became the first parent-child duo to fly in space.
Two months earlier, Shatner, who is famed for his role as Captain Kirk in the 1960s sci-fi series Star Trek, became the oldest person in space at the age of 90.
He was joined by Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries and Audrey Powers.
The original manned flight in July 2021 saw Bezos and his brother Mark blast to space with pioneering female astronaut Wally Funk, 82, and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen, whose father purchased his ticket.