Bezos blasts off

On the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, the wealthiest man in the world spent 10 minutes and 10 seconds in space on a capsule built by his company Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, flew on the rocket with his brother, Mark Bezos; an 18-year-old Dutch student; and Wally Funk, 82, a female pilot from Texas who passed NASA tests in the 1960s but never made it to space until Tuesday. Funk and the Dutch teen are now the oldest and youngest people to fly in space.

Is this the start of space tourism? Blue Origin plans to make two more passenger flights this year. Competitor company Virgin Galactic has taken more than 600 reservations for space flights. Tickets cost about $250,000 each. Both companies are challenging NASA’s exclusive contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has its first commercial space flight scheduled for September.

Dig deeper: Read John Dawson’s report in Beginnings on SpaceX’s race to set records.