Billionaire space race the 2016 International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson elaborated on the Bezos vision previously outlined in the New Glenn announcement. The Blue Origin New Armstrong would be similar in function to the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System that Elon Musk unveiled at the same conference. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are in the same market, suborbital space tourism, with New Shepard and SpaceShipTwo (Tier 1b), respectively. They are in a race to be first to launch paying customers on short spaceshots, with rival technological philosophies of space capsules and spaceplanes, respectively Virgin Galactic and SpaceX support
Space tourism Operators are however not covered in the case of gross negligence or willful misconduct. A web-based survey suggested that over 70% of those surveyed wanted less than or equal to 2 weeks in space; in addition, 88% wanted to spacewalk (only 14% of these would do it for a 50% premium), and 21% wanted a hotel or space station. The concept has met with some criticism from some, including politicians, notably Günter Verheugen, vice-president of the European Commission, who said of the EADS Astrium Space Tourism Project: "It's only for the super-rich, which is against my social convictions". A 2010