Jeff Bezos will fly to space, says 'it's a big deal for me’

Amazon Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos announced in an Instagram post today that he will be a passenger on his wholly-owned space company Blue Origin’s next flight, scheduled to be launched from West Texas on July 20. 

In the video posted on Instagram, Bezos said:

Bezos is set to step down from the chief executive officer’s role at Amazon on July 5 and take the title of executive chairman while his long-time lieutenant Andy Jassy takes over the CEO position.

Shares of Amazon are down by around 0.3% in the morning trading. The stock is also relatively flat on a year-to-date basis but up by around 26% for the trailing one-year period.

Is this a risk AMZN shareholders need to think about?

Sara Fisher, reporter at Axios, was on CNBC to discuss about Bezos’s decision and she said:

CNBC's space reporter Michael Sheetz, however, said that the Blue Origin has conducted more than a dozen uncrewed successful test flights and added that this is one of the most safe spacecrafts flying currently and also it’s not going all the way into orbit which reduces the risk pretty significantly.

Who else is on the flight?

Bezos will be accompanied by his brother, Mark Bezos, on the space company’s first human space flight and another crew member, who will be the winner of an auction. The highest bid currently stands at $2.8 million and the proceeds will be given to a charity.