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Handout from Blue Origin showing the New Shepard capsule
Photo: HO / AFP
The flight is only supposed to take ten minutes, but has a special destination: space.
The trip is worth $ 28 million to a still unknown person.
At this price, an anonymous bidder bought a seat on Saturday for the first manned space flight of a new space capsule from Blue Origin.
The online auction of the special flight opportunity lasted less than ten minutes on Saturday, and the starting price was $ 4.8 million.
The flight with the "New Shepard" rocket is scheduled to start on July 20th.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin, wants to take a seat in the capsule together with his brother Mark.
There are a total of four people on the passenger list.
The identity of the successful bidder will be revealed in the coming weeks, and a fourth person will also be determined.
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For several minutes in weightlessness
After launch, the spaceship is expected to accelerate to more than 3700 kilometers per hour within two minutes.
Shortly afterwards, weightlessness should start before the capsule reaches a height of over 100 kilometers above the earth.
The passengers fly for a few minutes above the so-called Kármán line, which marks the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and space.
For comparison: the International Space Station ISS flies 400 kilometers above the earth's surface.
After their soaring, the astronauts are supposed to re-enter the earth's atmosphere and "New Shepard" is supposed to land in the Texas desert, slowed down by large parachutes.
Blue Origin last tested the astronaut capsule in mid-April.
It reached an altitude of around 105 kilometers before returning to Earth.
For the first time, employees of the company also rehearsed some astronaut tasks before take-off and after landing.
The actual test flight, however, remained unmanned - the New Shepard has never flown with people on board.
On July 5, after three decades at the helm of Amazon, Bezos is handing over the management of the group to his successor Andy Jassy and had already announced that he would like to devote himself more to other projects in the future, including Blue Origin.
The space company wants to offer tourists short trips into space in the future.
Fok / AFP / dpa
