When Jeff Bezos resigns from his position as CEO of the online retailer Amazon.com on July 5, another major project awaits him: As he announced on Monday, he plans to fly into space on July 20.

The space company Blue Origin, which he also founded, will then launch people into space for the first time, and Bezos will be one of the passengers.

"I've dreamed of going into space since I was five years old," he wrote on his Instagram account.

There he also announced that his brother Mark would accompany him on the flight.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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    Blue Origin announced plans for the first manned flight around a month ago.

    At the time, passengers were only told that one of the spaces should be auctioned off to a space tourist, and the proceeds from the auction should go to a Blue Origin foundation that tries to interest young people in science and space travel.

    On Monday, the company announced that the bid for this space is currently at $ 2.8 million and that nearly 6,000 people from 143 countries have already participated in the auction.

    The space capsule of the New Shepard missile system, which is to be used on the flight on July 20, offers space for a total of six passengers.

    Blue Origin founded in 2000

    The trips planned by Blue Origin are comparatively short and should go as far as the Kármán Line, which is a hundred kilometers above sea level and is considered the boundary between the earth's atmosphere and space. The passengers should then be able to experience the feeling of weightlessness for a few minutes before the capsule returns to earth.

    Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, six years after Amazon.

    He once said he sells $ 1 billion worth of Amazon stock every year to fund the space company.

    Blue Origin originally wanted to bring tourists into space as early as 2018, but these plans have been delayed, as is usual in the industry.

    After the flight in July there should be more trips this year.

    How much a regular tourist seat should cost is not yet known.

    But it is reckoned that it will be several hundred thousand dollars.

    Successor Andy Jassy is ready

    Other companies are also working to get tourists into space. For example Virgin Atlantic, a provider behind which the British billionaire Richard Branson is. Branson plans to soon be on board a Virgin flight into space himself. Then there is also Elon Musk, the CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla, who, like Bezos, has a second project in space travel. His company Space X plans to launch civilians into space later this year. It has recently carried astronauts to the ISS space station several times for the American space agency. It also recently won a NASA contract to develop a lunar module, outperforming Blue Origin. Blue Origin has protested against the decision.

    The 57-year-old Bezos announced his retirement from Amazon's CEO in February. His successor will be the 53-year-old Andy Jassy, ​​who has previously managed the high-growth and profitable cloud computing business in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division. Bezos wants to remain connected to Amazon as executive chairman of the board of directors. He has said that he will continue to play a role in "important Amazon initiatives" in the future. Otherwise he wants to spend more time on his other interests such as Blue Origin.