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Blue Origin launches first suborbital tourists after six years and 15 test flights
More than six years after New Shepard’s first test flight and nine years after a pad abort featuring a prototype of the rocket’s capsule, Blue Origin has launched its first crew of suborbital tourists.
Almost exclusively funded by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ stock sales over more than 21 years of operations, Blue Origin has been working towards New Shepard’s first crewed launch for approximately a decade. Aside from a pad abort test of the rocket’s relatively simple ‘crew capsule’ in October 2012, New Shepard – purported to be fully reusable – has performed 15 uncrewed test flights since April 2015. At least according to Blue Origin, of those 15 tests, 14 were fully successful and 11 crossed the 100 km (~62 mi) Karman Line – a largely arbitrary line drawn between Earth’s atmosphere and space.
Six years and three months after New Shepard’s first flight, the rocket lifted off on its 16th suborbital mission and inaugural crewed launch. Along for the ride were Jeff Bezos himself, brother Mark Bezos, hedgefund multimillionaire Joes Daemen’s son Oliver Daemen, and trailblazing pilot and aviator Mary “Wally” Funk.
While New Shepard NS-16 reached an apogee of 107 km (66 mi) and a maximum speed of 2233 mph (1 km/s / Mach 2.9), less than 13% of the way to orbit, the mission did mark a number of “spaceflight” firsts insofar as its passengers did technically spend between 70 and 150 seconds in “space.” Notably, NS-16 passengers Oliver Daemon and Wally Funk are now respectively the youngest and oldest people in history to reach space. While Blue Origin hasn’t disclosed the value of his second-place bid, Oliver Daemen was technically a paying customer, making New Shepard the first rocket in history to launch a paying passenger on its first crewed flight.
In June, Blue Origin held a tone-deaf auction that ultimately resulted in a mystery buyer winning the first ticket on New Shepard at a jaw-dropping cost of $28 million – just shy of the $30M Richard Garriott paid to ride a Soyuz rocket to space, spend almost two weeks in orbit, and scream back to Earth at Mach 25. Bizarrely, the company still hasn’t revealed the winner, at no point mentioned that there would be runners-up, inexplicably swapped the mystery winner for Oliver Daemen with “scheduling issues” as the comical excuse, and has yet to reveal what Daemen paid for his ticket. In general, Blue Origin still refuses to provide any information about the price of seats on New Shepard.
Meanwhile, although Blue Origin did provide invite-only access to some media outlets and offered numerous interview opportunities with the NS-16 crew, there have been virtually zero chances for reporters and journalists to ask real questions. Beyond New Shepard, which raises dozens of questions on its own, Blue Origin’s orbital New Glenn rocket is years behind schedule and apparent issues with the BE-4 engine meant to power both it and the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Vulcan has also significantly delayed the latter rocket’s launch debut.
For the last several years, Vulcan and New Glenn were both aiming for a launch debut sometime in 2020. Both targets eventually slipped to 2021 and as of 2021, Vulcan is now expected to launch no earlier than early 2022 and New Glenn’s debut has slipped to “late 2022” – likely meaning 2023.
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On its own, New Shepard has had one of the most bizarre development paths of any rocket in history. Despite virtually unlimited resources from Bezos’ average sale of billions of Amazon stock each year and the fact that New Shepard is a fully reusable rocket that demonstrated the ability to fly twice in ~60 days in 2016, Blue Origin has only launched the rocket 15 times in the 75 months before NS-16. The company has never once implied that New Shepard suffered major issues during any of its test flights, save for NS-1’s failed booster recovery (though Blue has generally glossed over or ignored that lone failure).
Somewhat coincidentally, New Shepard’s first test flight occurred just a few weeks before SpaceX attempted the first major test of a partially integrated Crew Dragon prototype, resulting in a successful pad abort test in May 2015. Despite several significant, documented delays, less than four years later, Crew Dragon aced an uncrewed orbital launch to the ISS and back to Earth. 14 months after Demo-1, SpaceX became the first private company in history to launch astronauts to orbit. Less than six months after that historic launch and four months after Crew Dragon returned two NASA astronauts to Earth, SpaceX launched its first operational four-astronaut mission to the ISS.
In the same period that Blue Origin completed five uncrewed New Shepard test flights, SpaceX launched Crew Dragon’s Demo-1, In-Flight Abort, Demo-2, Crew-1, and Crew-2 missions, carrying six astronauts to orbit and back and delivering another four to the ISS (where they still are). Not only did SpaceX also launch five Crew Dragons, but April 2021’s Crew-2 mission marked the first time in history that astronauts launched on a flight-proven liquid rocket booster and a flight-proven space capsule, beating Blue Origin to the punch despite the far greater challenges and risks posed by orbital spaceflight.
Put simply, it’s disappointing but not exactly surprising that Blue Origin continues to go to great lengths to avoid having to answer questions that haven’t been obviously vetted or preselected.
Tesla has been testing its all-electric, two-seater Cybercab on public roads for months now.
Nearly two years after its unveiling, the Cybercab has been seen by perhaps tens of thousands as the company has expanded testing to a handful of states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, and New York, among several others.
However, nobody has seen one like this quite yet.
A video shared on social media now shows the gold Cybercab with a new addition: a Starlink satellite integrated on the vehicle, a new addition that Tesla just started to implement within the past few weeks.
@lottaherm More cybercabs being spotted now with Starlink integrated π #cybercab #tesla #elonmusk #houston #htx β¬ original sound – ππΌπΏππΉπΉπ§π΅π²π’ππΉπ|π
Just a week ago, Tesla announced that it had built its first Cybercab with Starlink integration and showed it off at Gigafactory Texas. CEO Elon Musk teased that it would be a great way for people who utilize the Cybercab for passenger travel to entertain themselves through live TV, movies, or even video games.
Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said it is also a huge advantage for Tesla as it will enable constant connectivity between the company and the fleet of Cybercabs it has. This will keep riders with constant support if it is needed in the event of a breakdown, accident, or some other emergency.
Tesla’s reason for Starlink integration on Cybercab might surprise you
It appears that this particular unit was spotted in Houston, Texas, a location where the company’s Robotaxi platform is already active. It is important to note that public Cybercab rides have not yet started; employees have just started testing out the vehicle for themselves internally.
Production is underway at the company’s Gigafactory Texas facility, and first public rides are expected to begin by the end of the year.
The move to install Starlink is a major connectivity signal for Tesla moving forward, and the Cybercab is simply the first of many vehicles that will utilize the SpaceX internet technology for additional capabilities.
Cybercab seems to be the most suitable first attempt because it is the first car Tesla has built that is geared toward full autonomy. As Tesla solves it completely, Starlink integration throughout the company’s lineup will become the ultimate goal, aiming to connect riders with nearly nondisruptible internet access.
Tesla is building its largest East Coast Supercharger in New York City, planning to bring a 64- to 68-stall station to Queens, New York.
It will end up being tied for the largest Supercharger on the East Coast with this number of stalls. The largest on the Eastern Seaboard is located in Halifax, North Carolina, and is also 68 stalls.
Tesla is currently building a new 64-stall Supercharger station in Queens, New York. This will be the biggest Supercharger station on the East Coast of the U.S.
It will also have two pull-through stalls for EVs with trailers. Thx for the pics @LetsCleanNYC. pic.twitter.com/CCo0dIoHin
β Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 16, 2026
The location is also set to be fitted with two pull-through stalls for EVs with trailers. We’ve seen Tesla implement these types of parking spots at newer locations as EV ownership continues to expand to those who do more than simply drive their cars.
There are plenty of Superchargers in the New York City metro, but they are mostly located in boroughs outside of Manhattan. There are five Superchargers in various neighborhoods of Manhattan, but there are limited plugs; usually only four per location. There are plenty of Destination Chargers in the Big Apple, though.
Queens, the Bronx, and Brooklyn have become popular locations for companies to build out charging infrastructure for those who live in the highly populated boroughs. There is simply much more real estate to build effective EV charging stations.
The Supercharger will be located in Maspeth, Queens, at 48-26 54th Road. Maspeth has I-495 running through it, so this will be a great location for Tesla owners to hop off the highway on their way to Long Island or to Manhattan to charge up before continuing their journey.
Tesla has done a really great job of expanding its charging footprint throughout the past several years, especially by building large-scale projects that cater to areas that have a high volume of traffic and are main routes of travel to major areas. Tesla is making an effort to make charging less stressful and more widely available in these concentrated regions.
News
SpaceX just launched a secret payload from California
SpaceX launched a classified Space Force mission from Vandenberg, revealing almost nothing about its payload.
SpaceX launched a classified Falcon 9 mission for the U.S. Space Force from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Saturday night, and the government released almost nothing about what was on board. The mission, designated USSF-366, lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E with a window that opened at 9:52 p.m. ET and ran into the early hours of Sunday, according to SpaceX’s own mission page, which described the payload only as classified. SpaceX confirmed the launch on its X account and pointed viewers to a livestream that began roughly ten minutes before liftoff.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-366 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/FFEzeYOds1
β SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 16, 2026
The lack of detail did not stop analysts from filling in the blanks. Independent tracking of the rocket’s stage drop zones matched the pattern SpaceX has used on previous Starlink Group 15 missions, according to reporting from Outer Space Today, which pointed to Starshield as the likely payload rather than a one off government satellite. Starshield is SpaceX’s national security product, a version of the Starlink satellite bus built to Pentagon specifications for earth observation, communications and hosted payloads. Unlike consumer Starlink, government agencies do not have to disclose what Starshield satellites are actually doing once they reach orbit.
USSF-366 is the latest entry in a steady flow of classified and semi classified work between SpaceX and the Space Force. The company picked up a $178.5 million task order in April to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, as Teslarati reported at the time, and followed that in July with a $1.6 billion award covering 18 more Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027, also detailed by Teslarati. Add those contracts up and SpaceX’s Pentagon business for 2026 alone tops $8 billion.
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
The Falcon 9 that flew Saturday landed back near the launch site, producing the sonic booms that have become routine for residents near Vandenberg. What is less routine is how little the public will likely ever learn about what the rocket carried. SpaceX and the Space Force have not confirmed the Starshield connection, and government satellite programs built on commercial buses rarely get identified beyond a mission number and a general orbit. For a company that live streams almost everything else it does, from Starship test flights to Optimus robot demos, USSF-366 is a reminder that some of SpaceX’s busiest work now happens entirely out of public view.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
Tesla is building its largest Supercharger on the East Coast in New York City
