The world’s super-rich are queuing up to fly to the space.
After English billionaire Richard Branson, the world’s richest man, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is following his space-steps to the edge of the space.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin will fly its 16th New Shephard flight, which will actually be its first with astronauts on board.
Jeff Bezos isn't traveling alone. Two among the three of the US billionaire’s space-travel colleagues are setting aviation records. 18-year-old Oliver Daemen and 82-year-young Wally Funk would be the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to the space.
Teenager Daemen has been fascinated by space, the Moon, and rockets since he was four and him joining Bezos is a stroke of astronomical luck. Daemen, who has a private pilot’s license and is to study physics and innovation management at the University of Utrecht, was moved up when a seat on the first flight became available as a mystery bidder, who put up a whopping $28 million for an 11-minute joy ride, postponed his plan due to scheduling conflicts.
Some reports say that Daemen's spot was purchased for him by his father, Joes Daemen, who is the founder and CEO of Somerset Capital Partners, an investment firm based in the Netherlands.
When 82-year-old, Wally Funk, reaches the edge of the space, she will be fulfilling a dream she nurtured for six long decades. A NASA veteran, Funk was a part of the US space agency’s Mercury 13 mission in 1961 but the woman never got the chance. NASA required astronauts to be military test pilots and the military at that time didn't allow women to fly. The women of Mercury 13 often surpassed the results of the men during their rigorous training. For her test, Wally Funk floated inside a tank of water in a dark, soundproofed room. She couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything. She emerged 10 hours and 35 minutes later, not because she was done, but because the doctor administering the test decided it might be time to pull her out. Wally had her first flight lesson at age nine, became a licensed pilot at 17, and has logged more than 19,000 flying hours.
Mark Bezos, the younger brother of Jeff Bezos will be the third to accompany him.
Will Jeff's flight be any different from Branson's?
Blue Origin's New Shepard is a suborbital rocket that takes off vertically as compared to the aerial-launched space plane created by Branson's Virgin Galactic. However, quite similar to Virgin Galactic's plane, New Shepard is designed to shuttle space travelers more than dozens of miles above the Earth's surface for a few moments of weightlessness and panoramic views of the Earth.