It looks like the Final Frontier will have to wait.
Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by Amazon's (AMZN) Jeff Bezos, is singing the blues over its space tourism capsule that has been grounded after its escape motor fired in error.
DON'T MISS: Amazon's Expansion Plan Just Hit a Major Roadblock
The incident occurred during an uncrewed mission on Sept 12 when the New Shepard rocket fired its launch escape motor about a minute after liftoff from the company’s West Texas test site, according to SpaceNews.
New Shepard is the same rocket that boldly took actor William Shatner -- Captain Kirk on "Star Trek" -- and four others for a ride to the edge of space back in October 2021.
'We'll Get To The Bottom Of It'
Shatner was 90 years old at the time of the launch, making him the oldest person to travel into space.
"We are investigating that anomaly now, the cause of it," Gary Lai, chief architect for New Shepard rocket program at Blue Origin, said while speaking at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference. "We will get to the bottom of it."
The company has provided few updates about the status of the investigation since the incident.
"I can't talk about specific timelines or plans for when we will resolve that situation other than to say that we fully intend to be back in business as soon as we are ready," Lai said.
Lai also said that the abort system on the crew capsule operated as designed.
"I can tell you with certainty that the acceleration environment that we experienced was exactly what we predicted," he said. "It was exactly as the astronauts were trained for. Everything went according to plan."
Suborbital Tourism to Dominate
The mission was the 12th New Shepard flight that carried research payloads, either as a dedicated research flight or as part of the New Shepard vehicle testing program.
Those flights have carried more than 100 commercial payloads, he said, but such dedicated payload flights will be less prominent going forward.
“We expect that in the near future, the coming year, suborbital tourism will dominate our flights,” Lai said.
Bezos' company is part of the billionaire's rocket club, which includes Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit (VORB) , which suffered a setback in January when its LauncherOne rocket failed to complete its mission.
And even though Bezos' star trek has been temporarily tripped up, he can always sail the ocean blue.
The billionaire's $500 million mega-yacht, which comes with its own helicopter landing pad and stands taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza, was recently spotted cruising out of Rotterdam through the North Sea.
