The billionaire businessman suffered a blow as the space craft was unable to liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station as planned at 1am ET (6am GMT).

At around 4am local time, they were forced to abandon ship owing to a "vehicle subsystem issue".

Blue Origin said in a statement: "We’re standing down on today’s launch attempt to troubleshoot a vehicle subsystem issue that will take us beyond our launch window.

"We’re reviewing opportunities for our next launch attempt."

The delay to the launch of the rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets comes after Amazon CEO Bezos confessed they were "most nervous" about the landing of New Glenn's first stage booster on a sea-fairing barge in the Atlantic Ocean 10 minutes after liftoff.

He told Reuters before the failed liftoff: "The thing we're most nervous about is the booster landing.

"Clearly on a first flight you could have an anomaly at any mission phase, so anything could happen."

Blue Origin's team is currently working out when the next attempt will take place.