Blue Origin is planning on getting people into space by the end of 2017 and starting commercial sales of the flights a year later.

As Elon Musk's SpaceX has grabbed headlines with its explosions and promises of Mars, the other space tourism company owned by a billionaire has quietly making headway in its goal of sending people into suborbital space.

After Blue Origin's successful test of an emergency separation also revealed that the company can land the same booster rocket five times in a row, the company seems to be hitting the marks on its ambitious schedule.

The business side of Blue Origin is certainly planning for that outcome, at least. While speaking at a microgravity workshop, Erika Wagner, a business development manager for Blue Origin, said that the company is "aiming for the second quarter of next year," for the company's first test rides into space.

The current chief focus of Blue Origin has been its New Shepard reusable rocket system. Named after early astronaut Alan Shepard, the capsule can seat six and is powered by a BE-3 bipropellant rocket engine which uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

Given that Blue Origin has focused on suborbital flight while SpaceX has openly discussed interplanetary travel, a war of tweets has occasionally broken out between its two billionaire founders over the idea of ambition versus practicality. But by keeping its ambitions low—at least in the beginning—Blue Origin may just beat SpaceX at getting humans into space.

Source: Space, SpaceNews

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