Space company Blue Origin, whose founder Jeff Bezos will go into space on July 20, announced the name of the last passenger of the landmark flight. It will be 18-year-old high school graduate Oliver Damen – he will replace the winner of the auction, who bought this place for $ 28 million. He will be the youngest person ever to be in space.
Blue Origin announced this on its website. As a result, on July 20, in addition to the crew, Jeff Bezos himself, his brother Mark, 82-year-old American pilot Wally Funk and the son of Dutch billionaire Jos Damen Oliver will go on the first commercial New Shepard flight in addition to the crew.
The last place got almost unexpectedly. His father, the head of the investment firm Somerset Capital Partners, paid for a ticket on New Shepard's second flight. And along with Bezos, the unnamed winner of the auction was supposed to fly, who gave $ 28 million for this right. But he decided to skip the launch and go on one of the next flights, and Jos Dayman was pushed higher in the queue. As a result, he also could not fly on July 20 and gave his ticket to his son, found out CNBC.
Oliver Damen graduated from high school in 2020. Before entering college, he decided to skip a year to obtain a pilot's license. In September, he plans to attend Utrecht University to study physics and innovation management.
“This flight marks the beginning of commercial activity for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us pave the way into space,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin.
Thus, according to Blue Origin, Damen will become the youngest, and Wally Funk – the oldest astronaut who has ever been in space. In turn, Jeff Bezos will become the richest person to orbit the Earth.
On July 11, 70-year-old Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson managed to outstrip the founder of Amazon as the first billionaire to go into space on a ship of his own company. The Briton rose to an altitude of about 86 km above sea level, which NASA and a number of other space agencies already recognize as the lower boundary of space. However, Blue Origin, although they congratulated Branson on a successful flight, still refused to consider him space. The company indicated that the Virgin Galactic ship did not overcome the so-called Karman Line – the conditional border between the Earth's atmosphere and space, which runs at an altitude of 100 km above sea level.
Photo: blueorigin.com
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