Jeff Bezos And Blue Origin Travel Deeper Into Space Than Richard Branson

Jeff Bezos' Completes His Blue Origin Flight To Space The founder of Amazon, who stepped down as CEO this month, lifted off early Tuesday with three crewmates on the maiden flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle. Jeff Bezos has become the second billionaire this month to reach the edge of space, and he did so aboard a rocket built by a company he launched. The founder of Amazon, who stepped down as CEO this month, lifted off early Tuesday with three crewmates on the maiden flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard launch vehicle. Riding with Bezos on the planned 11-minute flight were brother Mark Bezos as well as the oldest and youngest people ever to fly into space - 82-year-old pioneering female aviator Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen, 18, a physics student. That will give Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin - which he founded in 2000 - bragging rights over Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson, whose flight this month aboard SpaceShipTwo hit a peak altitude of around 282,000 feet, surpassing NASA's designated Earth-space boundary of 50 miles, but falling well short of the Kármán line. With Bezos' flight complete, Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, is left as the odd man out in the billionaire space race. Musk's SpaceX, which has flown astronauts to the International Space Station, is a heavyweight in the commercial space business compared with either Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin.