Oliver Daemen will fly to the edge of space after another passenger who paid $28 million for the seat had a scheduling conflict.
Someone paid $28 million to not go to space with Jeff Bezos next week. Instead, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands will join the flight. His name is Oliver Daemen, and the flight would make him the youngest person ever to go to space. Mr. Bezos, who just stepped down as chief executive of Amazon, announced last month that he would be one of the passengers when his rocket company, Blue Origin, conducts its first human spaceflight. The flight is scheduled for Tuesday, to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon. It is to follow Richard Branson’s flight to the edge of space this past Sunday in a rocket plane built for the company he founded, Virgin Galactic. When Mr. Bezos made the announcement, he said one of the other seats on New Shepard, a reusable suborbital capsule that goes up more than 62 miles before coming back down, would be auctioned to the highest bidder, with the proceeds going to Mr. Bezos’ space-focused charity, Club for the Future. More than 7,600 people from 159 countries participated in the monthlong auction, which concluded on June 12. The winning bid was $28 million, and Blue Origin said it would reveal the bidder at a later date. On Thursday, just five days before the flight, Blue Origin still did not reveal the winning bidder, but said in a news release that this person decided to defer the trip to a future New Shepard launch “due to scheduling conflicts.
