Blue Origin CEO Says Company is Doing This in Order to Meet Demand for Space Tourism

It’s the year 2022 and the concept of space tourism is getting bigger and bigger.

This week Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said the company needs to build more of its New Shepard rockets to meet the demand from the space tourism market.

“I think the challenge for Blue at this point is that we’re actually supply limited,” he said at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington.

Blue Origin launched three crewed missions last year, and according to Smith, the company can “easily double that” number of missions in 2022.

New Shepard launches from Blue Origin’s private facility in the Texas desert and reaches above 100 kilometers, past the 80-kilometer boundary the U.S. uses to mark the edge of space. Blue Origin currently has two operational New Shepard rocket boosters, one for research cargo flights and the other for passenger flights.

The pricing for seats on its New Shepard rocket have yet to be disclosed. The only indication of Blue Origin’s pricing structure comes from an auction for a seat on its first flight, which went for $28 million.

Founder Jeff Bezos has previously said the company has sold nearly $100 million worth of tickets, and Smith on Thursday said there were “thousands of people in the auction process.”

“We can see there’s very robust demand” for more New Shepard flights, Smith said. Smith spoke alongside Blue Origin Vice President Audrey Powers at Thursday’s FAA conference.

“I think we put together a very, very robust approach” to safety, Powers said, adding that Blue Origin has been “able to prove that out over the course of the year, with not just one but with three successful [crewed] flights.”

Smith said the tourism market is “really exciting” because it means the space industry gets “to hear other voices” who “haven’t been thinking about this for their entire life, giving the example of William Shatner who spoke after his flight.

Shatner said his trip was “the most profound experience” in comments to Bezos minutes after landing back on Earth.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.