Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeffrey P. Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, successfully separated a crew capsule from a rocket after it had lifted off on Wednesday, an important step toward Blue Origin’s goal of carrying tourists into space.

Before putting anyone on board its spacecraft, the company wants to make sure that its rockets’ launch-abort system will carry passengers to safety if anything goes wrong during a flight.

“It’s like the airbag in your car,” Ariane Cornell said as she helped host Blue Origin’s webcast of the test. “It provides some peace of mind, but you’re only going to use it if there’s an emergency.”

She said it was the first in-flight test of an abort system since those conducted by NASA’s Apollo program in the 1960s. The Apollo tests also did not carry any people.