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Alienor Hammer draws parallels between an artwork and space exploration.

This week, Jeff Bezos announced that he will be on Blue Origin’s first human flight next month on the New Shepard spacecraft, which will make him one of the first civilians to reach space. He plans to fly to the edge of space, to the boundary known as the Kármán line, which is 100km above sea level. Also aboard in the spaceship will be his brother, Mark Bezos, and the winner of the auctioned third ticket, valued at $2.8m.

New Shepard is a capsule-like spacecraft, fully autonomous, and can accommodate 6 people. It will fly to the Kármán line at a speed three times greater than the speed of sound, before falling back and deploying a parachute to reach the ground, a mere 10 minutes after its launch. The spacecraft has already safely made 15 successful test flights with no crew.

Blue Origin, a company funded by billions of dollars from Bezos, is a rival to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. If the launch of New Shepard goes ahead as planned, Bezos will be well ahead in “billionaire space race”.

This artwork by Shuqi Yang, titled “Spiritual Worlds” is ethereal, and reminiscent of the edge of space. What will these billionaires and their passengers participating in such suborbital flights find at the Kármán line? A dream come true, a feeling of rush and excitement, or just another outlandish experience for the rich?