What would you do if you had more money than you ever imagined?
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos answered the question on Monday, via Instagram, by declaring his intention to go to space next month.
Bezos said he plans to be on board when his company’s rocket launches on July 20, the 52nd anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing.
Blue Origin has six passenger seats available, and Bezos will take his brother, Mark, along with the winner of the company’s auction.
“Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post, which was accompanied by a short video clip that included Mark’s reaction.
“I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going to be on the first flight,” Mark Bezos said. “Then when he asked me to go along I was just awestruck.”
The auction’s current highest bid is $2.8 million. The closed bidding ends Thursday with a live auction on Saturday.
“Fewer than 600 astronauts have been to space above the Kármán Line (between the Earth’s atmosphere and outer space, according to Blue Origin) to see the borderless Earth and the thin limb of our atmosphere. They all say this experience changes them,” the company said in its auction announcement.
New Shepard (named for famed astronaut Alan Shepard) brings a capsule into position past the edge of space and, with its huge windows, will provide passengers a dramatic view.
The most recent of more than a dozen test flights, which cap out at around 340,000 feet, came in April at Blue Horizon’s operating base in Texas.
The capsule comes back to Earth with parachutes deployed.
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