"Blue Origin"

Jeff Bezoss Blue Origin spaceflight company has publicly offered to cover up to $2 billion in NASA contract fees so it can remain involved in the U.S. governments effort to return astronauts to the moon.

VAN HORN, Texas - Jeff Bezos rocketed past the edge of space Tuesday, launching from the improbable spaceport he has built in the West Texas desert here and fulfilling the lifelong dream of a die-hard Trekkie who was transfixed by the Apollo 11 moon landing and has pledged to use his fortune to open space for the masses.

The billionaire space race is heating up.

A couple of weeks after Jeff Bezos officially steps down as CEO of Amazon, hell leap into something more mythic: riding to the edge of space aboard one of his own rockets, alongside his brother, in a flight that would fulfill a lifelong dream.

Blue Origin, the space venture founded by Jeff Bezos, said Wednesday that it would fly people to the edge of space for the first time this summer and that one of the seats would go to the winner of an online auction intended to raise money for its nonprofit foundation.

Blue Origin, the rocket venture founded by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, executed what it called an "astronaut rehearsal" of its suborbital New Shepard rocket Wednesday, launching the craft to the edge of space after having employees board as if they were going to travel with it, then disembarking before liftoff.

For the first time in 10 months, Jeff Bezos's secretive space company on Tuesday flew a rocket to the edge of space from its remote launch site in West Texas. The successful flight came after a more than two-week delay and was Blue Origin's 13th trip to space, bringing it another step closer to one day ferrying paying customers there.