Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ spaceship has rocket for suborbital spaceship

Blue Origin, a space company owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, has finished work on a rocket engine for a suborbital spaceship and expects to begin flight tests this year, company officials said.

The so-called New Shepard spaceship is designed to fly three people and/or a mix of passengers and payloads to altitudes about 100km above earth. It will launch from Blue Origin's west Texas facility.

Testing and development of the rocket engine, called BE-3, has been completed, the last major milestone before the liquid oxygen- and liquid hydrogen-fueled motor is attached to the New Shepard capsule for flight, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson said.

Blue Origin has not started selling tickets for flights on New Shepard or released prices. "The engine is ready for flight ... and ready for other commercial users," Meyerson said. He declined to be more specific about when New Shepard would fly, except to say "soon".

Blue Origin is among a handful of companies planning to offer commercial spaceflight services. New Shepard is a suborbital system, like Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, a six-passenger, two-pilot spaceplane that is expected to resume test flights later this year following a fatal accident last October.

Another company, privately owned XCOR Aerospace, is working on a two-seater spaceplane called Lynx that also is slated to debut this year, founder and chief technology officer Jeff Greason said.