$28m scores mystery bidder right to breathe same air as Amazon kingpin Jeff Bezos in Blue Origin flight $28m has secured someone a seat on the first crewed flight of Blue Origin's New Shepard, with the mystery bidder scoring the right to breathe the same air as fellow passenger Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Bezos had previously confirmed that he and his brother, Mark, would be strapped into the capsule atop the reusable rocket on …
Businesses have to report on potential risks to the business. For example Manchester United used to file that the company would be harmed should the manager at the time (Sir Alex) retire.
I'd love to read Amazon's corporate risk assessment of "our glorious leader is being strapped to an updated version of a V1 rocket and fired approximately upwards".
By the time the flight is planned, Bezos will not be an Amazon employee any longer. Consensus is that he hasn't been doing much for a long time anyway (busy with his new girl dontcha know), but once he's no longer involved in the corporation's business nothing that happens to him constitutes a risk to the shareholders. More practically, Amazon's never paid a dividend and if you totaled up all the net profits over the company's entire existence they'd come to just over $3 a share, or about 0.1% of the current market price. Given that track record of performance, it's difficult to believe that the loss of Mr Bezos would somehow deprive the shareholders of value; they should have fired him themselves years ago.
So they'll put the seat in a box 5 times its size, throw in a handful of half-inflated air bags, then hire a fourth-tier courier service to toss it from a moving van into your front hedge at 9pm?
We could keep going by speculating about how they'll respond when the seat breaks the first time you sit in it because it's actually a Chinese knockoff marketed by a third-party boiler room reseller who folded up shop the minute your $28m arrived, but that would spoil the surprise.
I am sure BO prices will fall but for $40M you can have a quarter of a Dragon or for €6,000 a Zero G ride on an A310. With $28M to burn I would wait for Axiom to add some tourist modules to the ISS. Dragon can carry 7 people which would be a rather cramped ride to ISS and back but more space when you get there. Starships might turn out to be cheap one day but lets wait for them to hatch before counting them.
i would put that ticket to good use .. Open the airlock at the right time .. " Here Mr Bezos .. make a huge leap for mankind " close the door and press the " decompress " button to send Bezos in space .. ( of course , without the benefits of a spacesuit ) .. then casually walk out the capsule and go home knowing i did humanity a favor.
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