Billionaire Jeff Bezos’s rocket company, Blue Origin, selected an 18-year-old to go on its first mission to space.
Oliver Daemen, 18, and Wally Funk, 82, another expected participant on the July 20 flight to space, will become the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space. The company announced Daemen’s attendance Thursday because the winner of the Blue Origin auction, who spent $28 million for a ticket on the spaceship, is unable to go “due to scheduling conflicts.”
“We thank the auction winner for their generous support of Club for the Future and are honored to welcome Oliver to fly with us on New Shepard,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin. “This marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space.”
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The company described Daemen, a 2020 high school graduate who took a gap year before he attends the Utrecht University to study physics and innovation management, as “the first paying customer to fly on board New Shepard,” though it did not specify how much he paid for the ticket.
The group of astronauts, which includes the Amazon CEO and his brother, will go over 62 miles above Earth, the unofficial point at which space begins, during the 10-minute trip.
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Once the crew capsule enters suborbital space, it will detach from the top of the rocket, and the passengers will experience weightlessness while gazing out at Earth. Then the booster will come back down to land vertically, and the capsule will return to Earth’s surface using parachutes, according to a visual diagram about the mission from Blue Origin.
The mission will be July’s second launch of a wealthy business magnate into space. British billionaire Richard Branson completed a successful mission to space on July 11, operated by Branson’s Virgin Galactic.
