---
title: "Amazon CEO Wants You On His Rocket to Space"
description: "Circa 2018 Blue Origin Will be Taking Customers"
date: "2016-03-09"
modified: "2016-03-09"
authors:
  - name: "Michael Frank"
    link: "https://www.thedrive.com/authors/michael-frank"
url: "https://www.thedrive.com/news/2500/amazon-ceo-wants-you-on-his-rocket-to-space"
categories:
  - "News"
tags:
  - "Amazon"
  - "Blue Origin"
  - "Elon Musk"
  - "Jeff Bezos"
  - "NASA"
  - "space"
  - "SpaceX"
---

# Amazon CEO Wants You On His Rocket to Space

![](<https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/archive-images/030916-blue-orgin-hero.jpg>)
*\<em\>www.thedrive.com</em>*

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, recently took journalists on a tour of his pet project facility. And not where he's been toiling away to deliver diapers via drone, but Blue Origin, a rocket ship factory in Washington State. Like Elon Musk's SpaceX and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Bezos wants to make space travel, and cheap interplanetary cargo hauling, a reality.

Also like Musk’s SpaceX and Branson’s [Virgin Galactic](<https://www.thedrive.com/news/2268/virgin-galactic-to-debut-new-spaceship>), the key is rocket recovery.

Blue Origin managed just that last November, when its *New Shepard* craft successfully went into space, then managed to both land its transportation pod *and* [get the rocket back on Earth](<https://www.blueorigin.com/#youtube9pillaOxGCo>). According to a [*New York Times* reporter](<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/09/science/space/jeff-bezos-lifts-veil-on-his-rocket-company-blue-origin.html?_r=1>) on the tour with Bezos, Blue Origin is now testing a new engine called the BE-4. That's set to go fully online by 2019, with testing beginning by the end of the year.

The big deal here is that the BE-4 would allow NASA to end its dependence on the older, Russian-made RD-180. The former will offer more thrust capacity (1.1 million pounds vs. 860,000 pounds), meaning NASA and private contractors could bring bigger payloads into space. BE-4 is also capable of variable thrust, which allows Blue Origin to use it for reverse propulsion, making it easier to recover *New Shepherd* after successfully delivering payloads into orbit. And because Blue Origin can re-use rockets, the solid motor is designed to be removed, saving $10 million per flight.

The glam side of Blue Origin, just as it is with SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, is [space tourism](<https://www.thedrive.com/design/2171/nasas-giving-away-brilliant-space-travel-posters-for-free>). Bezos says that could begin as soon as 2018, with short, sub-orbital flights of six passengers at a time.

### Author social links