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Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos’ privately held space company, Blue Origin, completed another successful launch on Wednesday. The rocket, New Shepard—named for U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard—is a reusable, suborbital spacecraft, which carried student art projects, a Columbia University experiment, and a recycling technology dubbed Oscar (possibly for the Sesame Street character who lives in a garbage can)—but no people.

Still, Blue Origin hopes to carry people to space sometime next year. You can sign up for a ride, but there are no dates or prices yet.

Tickets won’t be cheap. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings is also planning to whisk people into space in 2020, at $250,000 a head, which beats even Hamilton. And unlike Blue Origin, Earth-bound investors can buy the stock. Virgin Galactic trades under the—very cool—stock ticker SPCE—and took an unusual route to the markets. Branson retains a stake, but a portion was bought by a listed special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Call it a space SPAC. In the third quarter, the company lost about $50 million, on sales of $832,000. But the company has received $80 million in deposits from more than 600 people.

Of course, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has his own rocket company, SpaceX, with reusable rocket technology. SpaceX also hopes to offer space tourism, though timing and pricing aren’t available yet, either. And then there’s a joint venture from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance. Tourism may not be high on its agenda.

Last Week

Searching for Details

The Federal Reserve left rates alone, Congress kept the government open, and impeachment loomed. After a slow half-week, stocks rallied on Thursday when President Trump said a China trade deal was imminent. On Friday, China agreed, but offered few details, and stocks sagged, then firmed. On the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4%, to 28,135.38; the S&P 500 advanced 0.7%, to 3168.80; and the Nasdaq Composite soared 0.9%, to 8734.88.

Charges, Countercharges

House Judiciary wrote, then approved, two articles of impeachment against President Trump, one on abuse of power over allegations he pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, the other on obstruction of Congress. Separately, the Department of Justice’s inspector general released a report clearing the FBI of political motives in starting the 2016 Russia probe, but condemned mistakes and sloppiness in wiretap applications. Both Attorney General Bill Barr and Connecticut prosecutor John Durham, who are working on their own investigation of the Russian probe, questioned the IG findings.

A Big Week for Trade

The U.S. and China agreed to a phase-one trade deal, which rolled back U.S. tariffs and cancelled new ones in exchange for Chinese concessions. Earlier in the week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would support a revised Nafta 2.0 trade pact, with greater labor protections. And the World Trade Organization’s appeals court shut down after the terms of two of its last three members ended. The U.S. has blocked new appointees to protest WTO actions since the George W. Bush years.

Boris’ ‘Stonking’ Mandate

Britain went to the polls on Thursday to elect all 650 members of the House of Commons. In a surprise, the Boris Johnson–led Conservative Party took a true majority in the House of 364 seats—he called it a “huge, great, stonking mandate”—which means that the U.K. may now exit the European Union by Jan 31. However, in Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon’s pro-EU, pro-independence Scottish National Party won 48 of 59 seats, putting a Scottish exit from the U.K. back on the table.

Annals of Deal Making

Merck agreed to buy ArQule for $2.7 billion, and Sanofi took Synthorx for $2.5 billion. Both targets develop cancer-fighting drugs. The premiums were sky-high: 107% and 172%, respectively…Antivirus company McAfee with its owners Intel and private-equity firms TPG and Thoma Bravo, joined by Permira and Advent International, circled computer-security firm NortonLifeLock, according to The Wall Street Journal…Saudi Arabian Oil, or Aramco, sold shares on Riyadh’s Tadawul exchange, rising 10%.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com