Blue Origin teases more images of its New Shepard capsule

Even as Blue Origin has talked up its ambitions to build a larger New Glenn rocket this year, the company also continues to finalize work on its suborbital space tourism vehicle, New Shepard. On Wednesday, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos released some illustrations of what the experience might look like from inside the capsule.

The images show six leather, recumbent seats arranged around the interior of the spacecraft, and each seat features a large window view and a small personal view screen to track the flight. Passengers are wearing Blue Origin pullovers, apparently their "launch suits." The images also show a brightly lit console in the middle of the capsule—but this isn't a table or an in-flight service bar; it's the capsule's escape motor. The company demonstrated the functionality of this feature with a dramatic in-flight escape test last October.

Blue Origin hasn't disclosed pricing for the approximately 10-minute flight into space, which will likely cost $100,000 to $200,000. Commercial flights could begin next year, and it should be quite a ride, as passengers will feel the effect of rocketing into space. During ascent, passengers will experience 3 to 4Gs and up to 5Gs during descent, although the maximum g-forces will last only for about 10 seconds.

“The fun thing about ascent is the accelerating acceleration,” Bezos explained last year. “Basically you have more than 100,000 pounds of thrust from the BE-3 engine, and when you start out there’s a lot of propellant on board, and so you’re accelerating fairly slowly. But as you burn off the propellant, the vehicle gets very light and the thrust stays the same. So the acceleration increases.” The ride will include about three minutes of weightlessness before New Shepard parachutes back to Earth.

Listing image by Blue Origin