New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical landing, and can carry a crew. The first uncrewed test flight of the New Shepard vehicle was in 2015. Blue Origin began testing prototype engines and vehicles in 2006 and completed full-scale engine development in 2015. Testing continued in 2016 and 2017, and Blue Origin planned its first crewed test flight for 2018, but it was delayed until 2021. As of 4 August 2022, New Shepard has flown 32 passengers into space. Tickets for commercial flights began to be sold on May 5, 2021, for flights carrying up to six people. New Shepard is a one-stage rocket consisting of a crew capsule and a booster rocket. The capsule can seat six passengers. The booster rocket, powered by a BE-3 liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen engine, propels the capsule to an altitude of over 100 km, where passengers can experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the capsule returns to Earth. The vehicle is designed to be fully reusable, with the capsule and booster rocket returning to Earth via parachute and landing vertically on the ground. This allows Blue Origin to significantly reduce the cost of space tourism, making the experience more accessible to the general public. Blue Origin has successfully launched and landed the New Shepard vehicle 21 times. History Early Blue Origin vehicle and engine development The first development vehicle of the New Shepard development program was a sub-scale demonstration vehicle named Goddard, built in 2006 following earlier engine development efforts by Blue Origin. Goddard made its first flight on 13 November 2006. The Goddard launch vehicle was assembled at the Blue Origin facility near Seattle, Washington. Also in 2006, Blue Origin started the process to build an aerospace testing and operations center on a portion of the Corn Ranch, a land parcel Bezos purchased north of Van Horn, Texas. Blue Origin Project Manager Rob Meyerson has said that they selected Texas as the launch site particularly because of the state's historical connections to the aerospace industry, although that industry is not located near the planned launch site, and the vehicle will not be manufactured in Texas. On the path to developing New Shepard, a crew capsule was also needed, and