Blue Origin to double passenger flights
February 24, 2022
By Chris Forrester
The Jeff Bezos-backed Blue Origin rocket system says it plans to more than double the number of people it lofts into sub-orbital space upon its New Shepard vehicle.
It was a New Shepard rocket which carried William Shatner into sub-orbital space last October.
Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, speaking at the annual FAA Commercial Space Transportation event, explained that his company saw “robust” demand for passenger trips.
“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. “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 stated.
Smith added that Blue Origin could easily double the number of passengers it carried this year. “We have a great understanding of not only, by name, people and what they would pay, but also the volume of people. We can see what that curve is from higher prices down to lower prices in terms of volume.”