Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Preparing For Rocket Launch Into Space

The billionaire space race continues this week as Amazon AMZN founder Jeff Bezos will be onboard the New Shepard Rocket scheduled to launch on Tuesday. Bezos has invested billions of dollars into his Blue Origins LLC project which he founded in the year 2000. The space market is expected to generate annual sales of over $1 trillion by 2040 according to Morgan Stanley MS.

The New Shepard will be blasting off from a launch pad in the West Texas desert, southeast of El Paso. It will reach an altitude of about 65 miles and passengers will be weightless for several minutes. The capsule carrying Bezos and three others will then return to earth by a parachute and land in the Texas desert. The trip will take approximately 10 minutes.

Joining Bezos on the journey is 82-year-old Wally Funk, a former test pilot who was one of the Mercury 13 women trained for a space flight in the 1960s . Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, 18, who could become the world's youngest astronaut, and Bezos' brother, Mark.

Billionaire rival Richard Branson successfully traveled to the edge of space last Sunday in the Virgin Galactic SPCE ship Unity. Although shares of Virgin Galactic stock have fallen every trading day since his flight, down 39% over five days last week.