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Technology Jeff Bezos Amazon

Jeff Bezos to sell $1bn of Amazon stock each year to fund space ambitions

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By John Glenday, Reporter

April 6, 2017 | 2 min read

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos has confirmed his intention to sell $1bn of shares in his e-commerce empire each and every year in his pursuit of outer space.

The beneficiary of this largesse will be Blue Origin, the aerospace firm established by Bezos with a view to growing humanity’s footprint in space, a lofty goal which carries a stratospheric price tag.

Fortunately, with an estimated net worth of over $78bn, Bezos has the readies to fuel his dream for the foreseeable future, while ramping up healthy competition with fellow billionaire space enthusiast Elon Musk who has been giving NASA a run for their money at SpaceX.

Outlining his goal of regular consumer spaceflight from as early as next year Bezos is pinning his hopes on the New Shepard rocket, which will be capable of ferrying paying passengers to the edge of space for the ultimate thrill ride.

The sky won’t be the limit for Bezos, who is currently developing an even larger launch vehicle named New Glenn which will have the horsepower needed to escape Earth’s gravitational field entirely.

Costed at $2.5bn the giant rocket could make its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral before the decade is out.

Bezos celebrated the first successful test flights of Blue Origin back in 2015.

Technology Jeff Bezos Amazon

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