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5,000 People Bidding Millions of Dollars to Be Flown to Space by Jeff Bezos

We’ve been promised to have space tourists flying around for years now. Two of the world’s richest people, Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, are behind these (until now) empty promises. But that’s about to change.
Blue Origin's first seat on New Shepard causes a stir 1 photo
Photo: Blue Origin
With Branson’s Virgin Galactic still trying to wrap its head around how to make space tourism safe, Bezos’s Blue Origin is picking up the pace and is planning to launch the first civilian into orbit as soon as July 20, 2021.

To make a spectacle of the whole thing, the company announced that it will be auctioning off the first seat on the New Shepard spacecraft at the beginning of May. Starting May 5 and up until May 19, the bids were placed out of sight in what was a sealed approach.

But on May 19, the unsealed part of the process kicked off, and the world gasped at the sight of how much people are willing to pay to put their lives at risk for a chance at entering the history books.

As soon as the auction became public, the highest bid for the seat to space was $1.4 million. That was roughly 24 hours ago (at the time of writing), and since then, the sum doubled, now reaching $2.8 million. By the time this news gets to you, this piece of information will probably be out of date as well.

You might be tempted to think some people place bids just to get Bezos all worked up and have no intention of paying what they promise. After all, registering to bid is as easy as anything else in the Amazon boss's universe, and you might be fooled into believing jokers could easily sneak it.

There is one catch, though. Blue Origin is doing identity checks and asks all those willing to place a bid to pay a $10,000 refundable deposit with partner RR Auctions before allowing them in.

And jokers usually don't like that.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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