Blue Origin's upcoming space-flight tourist Dr. George Nield says the space industry is going through "a major transformation."
The sector has gone "from a time in which almost anything that happened in space was done by [the] government to now — where private industries are playing an extremely important role. And that's just going to continue going forward," Nield, president of Commercial Space Technologies, told Yahoo Finance Live.
Nield and five other passengers, including Party America's CEO Marty Allen and Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson (who is flying as a guest), will travel on the fourth human flight of Blue Origin’s New Shepard program. The launch is slated for March 23rd out of Texas. This will be the first Blue Origin tourist flight of 2022.
"Each [passenger] has a strong interest in space and very different backgrounds. We've talked a couple of times virtually. I'm looking forward to getting to see and getting to know all the other folks face to face when we head down to West Texas in just a couple of days," said Nield.
"I'm very much looking forward to look out the window, and see black sky and the curvature of the Earth and experience that magic of weightlessness. It's just going to be the experience," he said.
Although Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about the price of its tickets, competitor Virgin Galactic's voyages recently went up to $450,000 each. Though Nield says tickets are expensive today, he believes voyage prices will lower as more flights take place.
"Many people estimate that by the time it gets down to the price of an expensive car or RV, then you're going to see lots of folks who will be able to experience this for themselves and that will be a really good thing for the industry," said Nield.
Last year, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk's SpaceX all conducted historic missions.
Ines is a markets reporter covering stocks from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Follow her on Twitter at @ines_ferre
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