July 16, 2021 4 min read

Next July 20, 2021 is the scheduled date for the first trip into space with passengers from Blue Origin , Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company. On board will travel the billionaire founder of Amazon , his brother Mark and veteran aviator Wally Funk . The mysterious millionaire who paid 28 million dollars for a seat should also go on the ship, but has already canceled, arguing ‘scheduling problems’.

Just days after takeoff, the anonymous mogul recalled that he had something more important to do, Blue Origin reported in an official statement . Although the identity of the buyer has not been revealed, it is known that he paid the millionaire sum after winning the charity auction announced last May.

His place will be taken by Oliver Daemen , an 18-year-old student who has a private pilot’s license and is taking a year off before entering university to study physics. The young man is the son of Joes Daemen, CEO of Somerset Capital Partners, who paid an unspecified amount for a seat on Blue Origin’s second manned flight. The boy will become the first paying customer of Blue Origin and the youngest person to travel to space .

Welcome to the crew, Oliver! We’re grateful to have you as our first customer to mark the beginning of commercial operations. #NSFirstHumanFlight https://t.co/gwZ6qBOFpi pic.twitter.com/SuOwxe2353

– Blue Origin (@blueorigin) July 15, 2021

Of course, Oliver Daemen is not the only one who will break a record on that flight. 82-year-old Wally Funk will be the oldest person to go into space in history.

What will Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos’ first flight into space look like?

Next Tuesday, July 20, the New Shepard suborbital rocket will take off to launch the RSS First Step space capsule . The vehicle works autonomously and does not need a pilot on board, in addition, both the rocket and the capsule are completely reusable.

The RSS First Step space capsule is planned to reach an altitude of approximately 100 kilometers above sea level. At this altitude is the Kármán line, the limit that the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale recognizes as the border of space. This means that Bezos’ spacecraft will exceed the height reached by Richard Branson on Virgin Galactic’s first manned flight into space , which was 80 kilometers.

While the capsule can hold six passengers, Blue Origin’s first group of space tourists is made up of just four people. Travelers will experience the sensation of weightlessness for about three minutes before returning to Earth, in a fall cushioned by three huge parachutes.

The statement notes that the mysterious millionaire already has a place secured “on a future New Shepard mission .” They detailed that the money raised in the auction allowed Club for the Future , a foundation created by Blue Origin , to donate 19 million dollars to 19 non-profit organizations, that is, one million each.