New Shepard Auction Update: The Bid Remains the Same

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

Checking up on Blue Origin’s auction of a seat on the first crewed New Shepard flight, we find that the top bid remains at $2.8 million. That’s exactly where it was a few days after online bidding became public on May 19.

Online bidding will end next Thursday, June 10 at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 UTC). Bidders need to raise their bid limits before that deadline. Two days later, the competition will conclude with a live online auction.

New Shepard will fly the winning bidder and five company employees on New Shepard’s first crewed suborbital flight on July 20. The first flight with a paying space tourist (aka., spaceflight participant) would be a milestone for the industry and a win for Jeff Bezos’ company, which has recently lost some high-profile government contracts to Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

Unless, of course, rival Virgin Galactic beats them to the punch. Richard Branson’s company does not yet have an operator’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly paying customers. If they were to receive a license between now and July 20, they could fly someone like Branson who is not employed by the company aboard SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity as a spaceflight participant.

VSS Unity is still in flight tests. The company’s schedule calls for four employees to fly in the cabin to test out the experience for future space tourists. Then Branson will fly to give his evaluation. The final flight test will include three Italian Air Force officers who will train for future spaceflights and conduct experiments. Virgin Galactic could always change that schedule if it receives its operator’s license from the FAA.

Virgin Galactic plans to complete flight tests by late summer or early fall. VSS Unity and its VMS Eve mother ship would then undergo about four months of upgrades to prepare them for the start of commercial service in early 2022.

Virgin Galactic has long billed itself as the world’s first “spaceline” even though it has not flown a single paying spaceflight participant since Branson announced the SpaceShipTwo program nearly 17 years ago. Development has been marred by more than a decade of delays and two fatal accidents that killed four people.