Bezos Aims Rocket Maker’s Ferocity at Tourism to Cut Space Costs

The motto at billionaire Jeff Bezos’s rocket company is “gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “step by step, ferociously.” The Amazon.com founder sees applying that intensity toward making space travel more like hopping on an airplane.

A week after his rocket rival Elon Musk revealed plans to send two unidentified people on a trip around the moon late next year, Bezos said Tuesday his Blue Origin LLC has flown its New Shepard capsule and booster more than 100 kilometers into the air five times. He sees flying thrill-seeking tourists on such missions -- to the edge of space and back -- bringing down costs much in the way modern-day trips on planes were made possible by stunt pilots who took trips with people in the 1920s.