What Is Blue Origin Passenger Chris Boshuizen's Net Worth?

Chris Boshuizen, one of the four passengers on Blue Origin’s second launch of its New Shepard rocket, has plenty of experience in the space industry. Prior to co-founding Planet Labs, he worked at the NASA Ames Research Center as a Space Mission Architect.

Boshuizen might not be the most famous of the four passengers on the Oct. 13 Blue Origin spaceflight. He flew to the edge of space with the one and only William Shatner. However, he's only the third Australian to go into space.

The physicist didn’t want to comment on the price he paid to secure a seat on this Blue Origin flight. Although he admitted, “I’m going in the expensive phase of the opening up of space travel.” He compared the cost to the opening night of a show. He said that the price tag will eventually decrease to make space travel accessible to more people.

According to NBC News, neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic have publicized the final price of admission on their spaceflights. However, most agree that the cost could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. This summer, The New York Times reported that Blue Origin auctioned off a spot on its first flight and the winning bid was $28 million. Virgin Galactic sold spots for $250,000 on its flights.

The New Shepard's first flight was highly anticipated and took place in July. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos went along for that ride.

Boshuizen said that although he was naturally nervous about the flight into space, he was looking forward to the experience. Referring to the opportunity to look at Earth from space, he said, "I will be only one of 600 people in the entire history of the 10 billion or so humans that have ever lived that have seen that view."

Boshuizen acknowledges that it might be "fair" to criticize billionaires like Sir Richard Branson and Bezos for spending their money on space exploration. However, he also defended their efforts to explore space. He said that it might be like any previous science technology in that those pioneering the technology were mocked at the time, but their innovations made an impact.

In 2010, Boshuizen co-founded Planet Labs with Robbie Schlinger and Will Marshall. All of them were former NASA employees. Boshuizen served as the company’s chief technology officer for its first five years.

Currently, Planet Labs is preparing to go public through a merger with the SPAC dMY Technology Group IV. Following the merger, the company will trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “PL.”

Planet Labs mainly collects data imagery through satellites orbiting Earth and mapping the planet from space.

There's very little public information about Boshuizen's private life. It appears that he isn't married. If Boshuizen is married, he has kept that information out of the public eye.