- Jeff Bezos shared a video of himself reading kids' postcards sent to him on a test flight for Blue Origin's space tourism rocket.
- Though Bezos is best known as the founder and CEO of Amazon, he also founded Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer and spaceflight firm, back in 2000.
- The space tourism rocket in the video is called New Shephard. It represents Blue Origin's attempt to develop a fully autonomous vehicle that can take paying customers on tours of space.
- In the video, New Shephard is successfully launched and landed after carrying thousands of kids' postcards, which Bezos describes as "beautiful."
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Jeff Bezos may be one of the most powerful people on Earth, but he's got half an eye on space, too.
The Amazon CEO posted a video of himself on Thursday reading kids' postcards sent to him on a test flight for Blue Origin's space tourism rocket.
Blue Origin is the aerospace manufacturing firm founded by Bezos in 2000, and one of its primary aims is to develop a rocket that takes paying customers on tours of space.
In Bezos' video, the specific model of rocket being developed do just that - aptly named "New Shepard" - is successfully launched into space and landed again over a period about 10 minutes, and with no crew on board. Bezos himself is then shown reading some of the thousands of kids' postcards that were stowed aboard that test flight, including one covered in drawings of planets from a girl named "Sophie."
"This card has been in space," Bezos says, reading Sophie's card aloud. "On it, the planets represent my love of the unknown. They are all different and they represent the universe." He describes the card as "nice" and "beautiful."
The test flight shown in the video, which took place on Wednesday from a launchpad in Texas, is the 12th test flight undertaken by the fully autonomous New Shepard. Though the flight was successful, it's not clear when exactly New Shepard will be ready to start chaperoning paying customers.
It had planned to offer paid spaceflights in 2019, though that timeframe has been shifted back slightly: the firm's CEO Bob Smith said in November that the firm would "probably" offer paid spaceflights in 2020. He added that the "initial tickets" for paying customers would be "in the hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Picture perfect flight @BlueOrigin. And this vehicle has now flown to space & back six times making this a new milestone. We carried 23 payloads today including thousands of postcards from kids all over the world for @ClubforFuture. Keep them coming kids & we'll keep flying them! pic.twitter.com/ZrjaknJh1t
- Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) December 12, 2019