An 18-year-old, Oliver Daemen is set to become the youngest person in space as he has been chosen as the first paying customer of Blue Origin, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s space company announced on Thursday.
Blue Origin auctioned a spaceship berth for a whopping $28 million but the winner, presumably an ultra-wealthy space aficionado, has chosen to fly on a future New Shepard flight “due to scheduling conflicts.”
The July 20 flight will represent the culmination of years of work for Blue Origin, which aims to help build a future in which millions of people live and work in space.
Blue Origin has however not disclosed how much Daemen paid for the seat or how it was selected.
The teenager is the son of Somerset Capital Partners CEO, Joes Daemen.
Daemen secured a seat on the second flight but was moved up to the first when the winning bidder pulled out, Blue Origin said. He then chose to instead fly his son, who is a physics student.
The announcement comes after Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson flew to the edge of space with his company on Sunday, beating Bezos on his flight of just over a week.
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It is not yet clear what the market for these suborbital flights will be in the future, but both companies hope to attract customers now to expand their base.
The crew for next week’s launch is now made up of Bezos and his brother Mark joined by Daemen and Wally Funk, a female aviator who passed astronaut tests in the 1960s.
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Jeff Bezos has said the flight will fulfill a lifelong dream for the teenager, “who has been fascinated by space, the Moon and rockets since he was four“.
His company plans to launch its passengers more than 100km (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface, allowing them to experience microgravity.
The capsule will then return to Earth using parachutes on a trip expected to last about 10 minutes.
