Company Exec Says Crewed Flights Are Roughly A Year Away ... If All Goes Well

Commercial space company Blue Origin is holding to a plan to launch a manned suborbital flight in 2018, "depending on how the test program goes," according to Jeff Ashby, director of safety and mission assurance.

Ashby's comments came at the recent Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference just a few days after the company launched a New Shepard booster topped with Crew Capsule 2.0, which is the prototype for an actual crew compartment for the company's planned suborbital flights. Ashby said Blue Origin is "roughly a year out" from human flights, according to a report from engadget.

But it will still be awhile before you can buy a ticket for a suborbital flight with Blue Origin. "We're probably a year and a half, two years out from when we're actually able to fly tended payload. We're about roughly a year out from human flights, depending on how the test program goes," Ashby said. "We have a bunch more tests to do, and we're going to fly some human test flights before we put paying people in the rocket."

SpaceX and Boeing also plan to launch humans into space in 2018 under NASA's Commercial Crew Program. But while Blue Origin will not go beyond the fringe of space ... just yet ... the other two companies have contracts to carry U.S. astronauts to ISS.

(Image from file)

FMI: www.blueorigin.com, Original Report