Bezos' secretive rocket project gives hint of future plans

A veil of secrecy has surrounded Blue Origin — Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos' project to build a rocket to take paying customers into space. Now the company is giving a hint of its plans. Blue Origin on its website is now giving a timeline for "flight opportunities," saying it expects to take unmanned scientific experiments into space in 2011 and actual astronauts into space in 2012. The company said it's already selected three research experiments.

Blue Origin, which has a facility in Kent, Wash., and a launch pad in West Texas, is developing New Shepard, described as "a vertical take-off, vertical-landing vehicle."

NASA officials have lately taken a shine to Blue Origin and other commercial space flight startups, as the Obama administration considers outsourcing elements of the U.S. space program to private contractors as a way to save money.

No word yet on how much a trip on the Bezos rocket will set you back. But with other business moguls in the space game as well, maybe there will be some price competition. PayPal co-founder and Tesla Chairman Elon Musk has his own project, SpaceX. And Sir Richard Branson is building Virgin Galactic.

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About Eric Engleman

ERIC ENGLEMAN is senior technology staff writer for TechFlash and the Puget Sound Business Journal, covering online retail giant Amazon.com. Engleman tracks Amazon's increasingly complex business, spanning ecommerce, Kindle, cloud computing, and more. He's been covering technology and other industries for the Business Journal since 2003.

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