The dawn of a new era of space travel may be upon us after Amazon's Jeff Bezos successfully tested a vehicle that will take tourists into space.

Mr Bezos' firm, called the Blue Origin company, has long spoken of its desire to take paying astronauts into the cosmos.

And now it has performed the first successful test of the vehicle they hope will make that dream a reality.

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Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company has completed a successful spaceflight test in West Texas (shown). The New Shepard vehicle rose to a height of 58 miles (94km) - four miles short of space - before landing. It was unmanned, but will ultimately take six people into space

The test took place from the company’s launch site in West Texas.

Called New Shepard, the vehicle consists of a main booster rocket and a six-seater capsule on top, standing 60ft (18 metres) tall.

HOW NEW SHEPARD WORKS The New Shepard system will take astronauts to space on suborbital journeys. It includes a Crew Capsule carrying six astronauts atop a separate rocket-powered Propulsion Module, launched from the firm's West Texas Launch Site. Following liftoff, the combined vehicles accelerate for approximately two and a half minutes. The Propulsion Module then shuts off its rocket engines and separates from the Crew Capsule. The Propulsion Module will finish its flight, descend to Earth, and autonomously perform a rocket-powered vertical landing. The Crew Capsule will go on to coast to the edge of space, providing astronauts with a view to the curvature of the Earth and the beauty of our planet. After descent and re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, the Crew Capsule will land under parachutes no more than a few miles from the launch site. In addition, the New Shepard vehicle will provide opportunities for researchers to fly experiments into space and a microgravity environment. Advertisement

For this, the first test flight of the entire architecture, it was unmanned - but the company hopes to soon start taking customers into space.

The cost of a ticket has not yet been announced, but estimates suggest it will be around £130,000 $200,000 - similar to a flight on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic.

The difference, however, is that while Galactic relies on using a plane to slowly rise into the atmosphere, New Shepard takes off straight up and lands back on the ground.

This is known as vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL).

And Blue Origin is also much more secretive - with this successful test flight taking many by surprise.

In video released by Blue Origin, the booster - using liquid hydrogen and oxygen - lifts the New Shepard vehicle to an altitude of 58 miles (94km).

This is four miles (six kilometres) short of the official boundary of space - the Karman Line - although there does not seem to be any problems with reaching this boundary in future.

Once it reached its peak altitude, accelerating at 3Gs, the booster separated from the capsule.

‘The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect,’ Mr Bezso said in a blog post.

‘Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.’

The flight came as somewhat of a surprise because the company didn't make any announcements in the build up that it would be launching a rocket - unlike its rivals Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who are very open about the tests they will be performing

At peak altitude, 307,000ft (58 miles, 94km) up, the main booster separated from the capsule. On the left, the booster can be seen falling away, while on the right a distant view of the separation is seen. The booster failed to land successfully but the capsule landed without a hitch

Ultimately, the flights will enable six people to go to space. While in space, huge windows will give the customers a stunning view of Earth (artist's impression shown), and they'll also have several minutes of weightlessness, before the capsule falls to Earth and lands using parachutes

Here the capsule is seen returning to Earth on this test flight with its three parachutes. ‘Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return,' Amazon's Jeff Bezos said in a blog post announcing the successful flight

The booster is designed to be able to land on the ground and be reusable, much like rival SpaceX’s own reusable rocket system.

On this occasion, however, the booster lost pressure in its hydraulic system and was not recovered.

Mr Bezos said the firm was already working on an improved system to make sure the error doesn’t happen again.

‘Assembly of propulsion module serial numbers 2 and 3 is already underway - we’ll be ready to fly again soon,’ he said.

In a video a small crowd was seen watching the successful flight from the company's launch site in West Texas - but for the most part the launch was kept a secret

Jeff Bezos (pictured) is better known as the CEO and founder of Amazon, with a fortune of £22.5 billion ($34.7 billion). He founded his Blue Origin company in 2000

THE NEW SPACE RACE: INTERNET BILLIONAIRES JEFF BEZOS AND ELON MUSK FACE OFF TO SEE WHO CAN CONQUER THE STARS FIRST Elon Musk, the PayPal co-founder and electric car maker, is competing against Bezos to develop a re-usable rocket An isolated edge of vast West Texas is home to a highly secretive part of the 21st-century space race, one of two being directed in the Lone Star State by internet billionaires whose personalities and corporate strategies seem worlds apart. The presence of Blue Origin, LLC, the brainchild of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, barely registers in nearby Van Horn, a way station along Interstate 10, a full decade after he began buying land in one of Texas' largest and most remote counties. At the opposite end — of Texas and the competition — is the highly visible SpaceX venture, led by PayPal co-founder and electric car maker Elon Musk. His company contracts with NASA to resupply the International Space Station and is building a launch site about 600 miles from Van Horn, on the southernmost Texas Gulf coast, with the much-publicized goal of sending humans to Mars. SpaceX and Blue Origin are among several U.S. companies engaged in the private space business. Both men have seemingly unlimited resources — Bezos' wealth is estimated at nearly $35 billion, Musk's at $12 billion — and lofty aspirations: launching a new era of commercial space operations, in part by cutting costs through reusable rockets. Earlier this year a dispute over a design of a floating landing platform - which would be used to launch and land rockets in the middle of the ocean - was dragged through the courts. But a judge said the confrontation would be allowed to continue. In part they are racing to be the first to manufacture and successfully operate reusable rockets - making space flight cheaper. According to The Washington Post, SpaceX has been working on the technology for years, and in January attempted the unprecedented landing the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on a floating barge it calls an autonomous spaceport droneship. However the barge and the rocket exploded. SpaceX founder and Musk, center, and Texas Governor Rick Perry turn the first shovel-full of sand at the groundbreaking ceremony for the SpaceX launch pad at Boca Chica Beach, Texas, in September 2014 Advertisement

Combined, the booster and capsule stand 60ft (18 metres) tall, with a feather painted onto the side

This is the walkway astronauts will ultimately use when the company stars its manned flights

In this first test flight, the New Shepard vehicle rose to an altitude of 58 miles (94km). This is four miles (six kilometres) short of the official boundary of space - the Karman Line - although there does not seem to be any problems with reaching this boundary in future

The flight of the capsule, however, passed without a hitch and it successfully landed on the ground with the help of three parachutes.

The company is keen on VTVL because it is ‘scalable to a very large size,’ according to Mr Bezos.

And he noted that the company was already working on a larger vehicle, New Shepard’s ‘Very Big Brother’, which is apparently many times New Shepard’s size with five times as much thrust.

The company has not yet revealed when it’s next flight will be, or when manned flights will begin.

'We won’t be publishing a calendar for our test flight programme. And, nothing further to contribute regarding pricing,' a spokesperson from Blue Origin told MailOnline.