Amazon's Bezos Ready to Join the Space Race

He founded Amazon, bought The Washington Post, and now billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos is out to conquer space.

Bezos, who's launched a rocket company called Blue Origin, will be at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 15 to announce that the firm will launch its New Shepard rockets there, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

He may also discuss plans to build those rockets — being designed to one day carry commercial passengers into outer space — along Florida's so-called Space Coast, the newspaper says.

Blue Origin would be the third private rocket business in the Cape Canaveral area.

The other two are SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. SpaceX has been working to overcome technical issues that caused a Falcon 9 rocket to blow up earlier this summer.

Blue Origin, privately funded by Bezos, has been developing technologies to enable private space flight. Its motto is "Gradatim Ferociter", Latin for "Step-by-Step, Ferociously."

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