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Blue Origin Announces Two-Year Pause in Space Tourism - to Focus on the Moon (techcrunch.com) 29

Posted by EditorDavid from the full-moon dept.
TechCrunch reports: Jeff Bezos' space company Blue Origin is pausing its space tourism flights for "no less than two years" in order to focus all of its resources on upcoming missions to the moon, the company announced Friday. The decision puts a temporary halt on a program that Blue Origin has been using to fly humans past the Kármán line, the recognized boundary of space, for the last five years. Blue Origin made the announcement just a few weeks ahead of the expected third launch of its New Glenn mega-rocket, which is slated for late February...

The company said Friday that New Shepard has flown 38 times and carried 98 humans to space, along with more than 200 scientific and research payloads.
"The move is a clear sign that Blue Origin is going all in on its moon program as the company races with rival SpaceX," reports the Business Standard, "to be the first private company to land humans on the lunar surface for Nasa's Artemis program." Blue Origin holds a $3.4 billion contract with Nasa to develop its Blue Moon lander, designed to shuttle astronauts to and from the moon, with a landing originally targeted for 2029... The company is targeting the launch and landing of a cargo version of its lander as soon as this year, as a test ahead of eventually landing humans. Blue Origin has also presented an accelerated plan to Nasa for developing a lander that may be ready for carrying astronauts ahead of Starship, the large new rocket from Elon Musk's SpaceX.
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Blue Origin Announces Two-Year Pause in Space Tourism - to Focus on the Moon More

Blue Origin Announces Two-Year Pause in Space Tourism - to Focus on the Moon

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  • This is certainly not a move away from tourism as a profit center, once they have the technology to land on the moon, they will try to monetize bringing tourists there. And I bet some are rich and crazy enough to pay $$$$$$$$ for a short journey to a barren, dusty place with lots of hazards waiting to kill you.

    • Ain't nothing worth seeing on the Moon. Guess you can get a selfie with the Earth. But I assume people who would blast tons of carbon into the atmosphere aren't really interested in the Earth

      • You mean, nothing worth seeing for you.. people like the desert, the artic region and more barren lands.. I personally would love to go to the moon, but you wouldn't get me to go on a beach holiday, laying on the beach doing nothing...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        Ain't nothing worth seeing on the Moon.

        While I am sure a surface excursion would be part of it, I imagine visitors to a lunar hotel would spend most of their time inside. A lot depends if the "hotel" is a cramped space where you sleep in bunks or something like that or if they hollow out (or use a lava tube or something) a space underground with plenty of space. In that kind of environment, people could have a pretty interesting experience with the lunar gravity. Imagine the hotel pool you could have, with guests practicing running on water, etc

    • And I bet some are rich and crazy enough to pay $$$$$$$$ for a short journey to a barren, dusty place with lots of hazards waiting to kill you.

      This is true, people go to Australia all the time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I doubt there will be many tourists headed to the moon in the foreseeable future. Blue Origin is only making the lander, they don't have a way to get to lunar orbit. Even if they did, the trip isn't exactly pleasant. NASA has at least managed to install a toilet on the new capsule, but it's still not a very fun place to spend a week.

      Some dedicated people will go, but it won't be like the joyrides to the edge of space that they do now.

  • is really going to pay off.

    • is really going to pay off.

      They have the Solar System distribution and screening rights for it..

    • I hope that one day, Jeff Bezos will be able to return to his home planet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      That was Jassie's bit of stupidity, Bezos isn't in charge of Amazon any longer.

      I was originally optimistic about Jassie taking over, he took AWS from "Let's try this, hold my beer" to "We're making so much money that Jeff actually had to pay dividends to shareholders." Afraid I'm not impressed with his leadership of the larger company.

    • Will it be the in-flight movie?
  • Is it possible the space tourism demand has shrunk? There is probably a limit as to how many rich people want to pay for bragging rights.

  • The Phallus 1.0 rocket needs to be tinkered with before its next flight.

  • FCC deadline requires them to launch 1600 satellites by 31st July 2026 and as of 31st Jan 2026 they have only launched 180 of them. Will they be able to meet this deadline? If not, StarLink will be a global monopoly for quite sometime.

    • FCC deadline requires them to launch 1600 satellites by 31st July 2026 and as of 31st Jan 2026 they have only launched 180 of them. Will they be able to meet this deadline? If not, StarLink will be a global monopoly for quite sometime.

      They will ask for an extension (I thought I saw they already did). And, because space is hard, they will most likely receive it (a number of the delays were legitimately outside the control of Amazon's Leo project).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tragedy ( 27079 )

      Am I the only one who accidentally read that as "Project Kessler"? Then went back and still kept mentally substituting Kessler?

  • 100 paying passengers is about $20 million revenue.
    No way BO made any profit on that, so they have given up on it.
    Nothing wrong with that, what's wrong is they are lying to hide it.

    I think BO will be way ahead of Spacex with a manned lunar lander ( Starship will take a long time to man-rate ) so good job BO are pushing ahead with landers, although there isn't much overlap between building a lander and continuing with Shepard flights, so more lies there.
    • There is one mistake you make, those flights are also all about getting data and practical practice on reusable rockets.
      • Engineers don't risk lives by changing hardware and they don't get data by launching the same hardware over and over.

        Unmanned Starship and Boosters exploding ? They're getting data.

    • I think BO will be way ahead of Spacex with a manned lunar lander ( Starship will take a long time to man-rate ) so good job BO are pushing ahead with landers, although there isn't much overlap between building a lander and continuing with Shepard flights, so more lies there.

      They have yet to put anybody in LEO. I don't see BO getting the capability to reach the Moon any time soon.

      • > I don't see BO getting the capability to reach the Moon any time soon.

        New Glenn did better, faster, than I expected. And, as I wrote previously, I hope BO are well-advanced on a manned lunar lander, because Spacex aren't going to get one man-rated anytime soon.

        BUT I see the DEI American lunar mission being Starship+Dragon to lunar orbit meeting a BO lunar lander there for the lunar orbit to lunar surface mission only, then Starship+Dragon home.

        "Wokeinsanity base here, the person with dark skin and the

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