In November 2015, Blue Origin made history as the first spaceflight company to launch and land a rocket back to Earth with its New Shepard launch vehicle. Years later, Space X has become popular for launching and landing its Falcon 9 rockets, and recently the Starship (SN15) built to take humanity to Mars and the Moon.

So, Blue Origin has a solid innovation paper that has made it a technology-first company even with a slow pace (Gradatim Ferociter) of executing public ideas and launching rockets. Now, the company aims to end its suborbital New Shepard test flights it has executed for the past 5 years, by taking humans to Earth’s high-altitude layers in line with the rocket’s initial goal of helping humans explore what lies beyond the white atmosphere clouds.

On 20th July 2021, the New Shepard rocket will launch its first Astronaut crew to space with only 1 seat available to bid for on the Blue Origin website. According to the company, only a single crew member will fly to space to make history as the first astronaut to ever launch aboard the New Shepard rocket capsule. To bid for a seat, simply visit www.blueorigin.com to enter your bidding amount, and hang tight for the next 3 phases of auctioning.

The Blue Origin New Shepard Seat Auction Schedule

• May 5-19: Sealed online bidding – you can bid any amount you want on the auction website (no bids are visible) 
• May 19: Unsealed online bidding –  bidding becomes visible and participants must exceed the highest bid to continue in the auction
• June 12: Live auction – the bidding concludes with a live online auction

How you can become an Astronaut with Blue Origin’s Flights

Initially, the first Blue Origin New Shepard flight was slated to take place earlier in 2020, but due to the COVID19 pandemic, the company extended its launch schedule to April 2021 before finalizing on 20th July 2021 as the final first human flight date.

After 20th July 2021, the New Shepard Rocket will officially be open for business with the ability for anyone no matter their country of origin, or citizenship to become an astronaut in 2021 by flying aboard a sub-orbital rocket. With the current bidding process, the highest bidder’s winning amount will be donated to the Blue Origin non-profit Club for Future program in which the young generation is inspired to pursue careers in space exploration.

Currently, only New Shepard ranks as Blue Origin’s only available spacecraft that can fly humans to space since its New Glenn rocket – biggest orbital rocket is still under production with its launch date expected to be in 2024.

The New Shepard rocket was named after Alan Shepard who made history as the first American to ever fly to space 60 years ago. So, Blue Origin named the launch vechile after him to honor his historic flight, and continue the legacy by flying humans to space since less than 600 astronauts have ever been to space since then.

More so, one can’t become an astronaut without going through sophisticated space education programs, qualifications, and accreditation from agencies like NASA, JASA, Roscosmos, CNSA, among others. To ease this, space tourism launch vehicles like Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin’s New Shepard launched to allow anyone to become an astronaut by simply taking a flight aboard a world-class rocket.

Statistically, the New Shepard rocket has made over 15 successful flights to space and back above the Karman line – separates earth from space. All previous launched were done to test multiple redundant safety systems to make future flights 100% safe for all crew members. And now, unlike Virgin Galactic’s founder Richard Branson, the Blue Origin’s founder Jeff Bezos will not be the one to take the company’s first space trip, but instead, the highest bidder to buy a ticket to space will enjoy a sole trip for a once in a lifetime experience.

Founded as a fintech startup, Chipper Cash was ready for Go on its launchpad in 2018 with Ugandan Ham Serunjogi and Ghananian Majid Moujaled as the project founders.

As a cross-border person-to-person (P2P) money transfer service, Chipper Cash operates in over 7 countries across Africa: Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, SouthAfrica, and Kenya through its mobile app and website.

Prior to Chipper Cash’s funding from Bezos Expeditions, the fintech startup raised $13.8million in Series A funding 6months ago. In the same timeframe, the startup reached $100 million in processed monthly payments.

With 3million active users and 80,000 daily transactions, Chipper cash has now raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Ribbit Capital with the participation of Bezos Expeditions.

While Speaking to TechCrunch, the Chipper Cash Co-founder Ham Serunjogi said the startup plans to expand its products and demographic coverage to reach more prospective users with cutting edge services.

We’ll always be a P2P financial transfer platform at our core. But we’ve had demand from our users to offer other value services…like purchasing cryptocurrency assets and making investments in stocks

Serunjogi told TechCrunch on a call

In partnership with Drive Wealth––a US financial services company, Chipper Cash plans to add the ability for users to buy cryptocurrency assets like Bitcoin, Entheruem, on top of making investments in US stocks like Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Boeing, to its products catalog as Ham noted.

“We’ll launch [the stock product] in Nigeria first so Nigerians have the option to buy fractional stocks — Tesla shares, Apple shares, or Amazon shares and others — through our app. We’ll expand into other countries thereafter”

Ham Serujongi

In a similar fashion, business users will get more features out of Chipper cash the same way they can with free client-business platforms like MTN Momo Pay and Airtel Money Pay in Uganda with the introduction of API payment solutions as Ham further added.

“We’ve been getting a lot of requests from people on our P2P platform, who also have business enterprises, to be able to collect payments for sale of goods,”

Chipper Cash Funding: A New Future for African Tech Startups

Prior to backing Chipper Cash, Jeff Bezos’s interest in African Startups rises after a string of other investor acquisitions and funding to African based tech startups with the most recent being Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack––A Nigerian founded fintech startup for $200million.

In a like manner, Jeff Bezos joins Big tech players like Mark Zuckerberg who through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative invested in Andela, then Jack Ma who often organises annual startup initiatives to fund investment-worthy ideas.

However, as an initial investment in the African tech ecosystem, Jeff Bezos’s $30m backing will drive global interest in African startups. By this fashion, a couple of multimillion exits have already been registered by several startups across the continent in 2020 alone.

Henceforth, Chipper Cash’s Series B funding with backing from Bezos Expeditions will help it launch into new markets and attract more users in countries in which it operates through its upcoming Cryptocurrency and Stock Investment features.

By Future projections, the Chipper Cash Co-founder Ham Erunjogi believes that the backing of his company by a notable tech figure like Jeff Bezos will not just help the platform grow, but will also benefit African tech startups that now have big tech investors searching for the next big startup ideas.

“It’s a big deal when a world-class investor like Bezos or Ribbit goes out of their sweet spot to a new area where they previously haven’t done investments.

Ultimately, the winner of those things happening is the African tech ecosystem overall, as it will bring more investment from firms of that caliber to African startups.”

Ham Serunjogi told Tech Crunch