Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will launch a crypto billionaire and five other people to the final frontier today (Aug. 3), and you can watch the action live.
The mission — known as NS-34, because it will be the 34th overall flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle — is scheduled to lift off from the company’s West Texas spaceport today, during a window that opens at 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT; 7:30 a.m. local time in West Texas).
Blue Origin will stream the launch live via its website beginning 30 minutes before liftoff. Space.com will carry the feed as well, if the company makes it available.
The highest-profile NS-34 passenger is Justin Sun, a 34-year-old billionaire who founded the blockchain platform Tron. In June 2021, Sun won an auction for a seat aboard the first-ever crewed flight of New Shepard, plunking down $28 million. (He did so anonymously; we didn’t learn that Sun posted the winning bid until December 2021.)
A scheduling conflict kept Sun from joining that landmark flight, which took place on July 20, 2021 — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The passengers that day were Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch student Oliver Daemen.
The people flying with Sun today are Arvinder (Arvi) Singh Bahal, an Indian-born American real estate investor and adventurer; Turkish businessman and photographer Gökhan Erdem; Deborah Martorell, a journalist and meteorologist from Puerto Rico; Englishman Lionel Pitchford, who has run an orphanage in Nepal for three decades; and American entrepreneur James (J.D.) Russell.
All are spaceflight rookies except Russell, who flew on Blue Origin’s NS-28 mission in November 2024. You can learn more about each of them in our NS-34 “meet the crew” story.
NS-34 will be the 14th human spaceflight to date for New Shepard, which consists of a rocket topped by a crew capsule. Both of these elements are reusable; the rocket comes back to Earth for a vertical, powered touchdown like those performed by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, and the capsule lands softly under parachutes.
Each New Shepard flight lasts 10 to 12 minutes from liftoff to capsule touchdown. During this brief time, passengers get above the Kármán line — the 62-mile-high (100 kilometers) demarcation widely regarded as the point where space begins — and experience a few minutes of weightlessness.
Blue Origin has not revealed its ticket prices, so we don’t how much folks usually pay for a ride. But it’s safe to say that it’s considerably less than Sun ponied up back in 2021.
That sum was a philanthropic contribution. according to Blue Origin.
“The proceeds from the $28 million bid benefitted 19 space-focused charities to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEAM [science, technology, engineering, art and math] and help shape the future of life in space,” the company wrote in an NS-34 mission description.
