Buyer of $28m Blue Origin space ticket has a scheduling conflict – so this teen will go instead
- Reference: 1626416824
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/07/16/blue_origins_flight/
- Source link:
Oliver Daemen will ride atop the aerospace upstart's New Shepard rocket, which is expected to launch on July 20. And he’ll have Blue Origin supremo Jeff Bezos, Bezos’ younger brother Mark, and [1]Wally Funk , a member of the Mercury 13 group, for company on the journey. If all goes well, the lad will be the youngest person to fly to space, and 82-years-old Funk will be the oldest.
"I am super excited to go into space," Daemen [2]said in a video shared on Twitter. "I've been dreaming about this all my life. Now I'll become the youngest astronaut ever because I'm 18 years old."
De 18-jarige Oliver Daemen uit Tilburg wordt de jongste astronaut ooit en de vierde Nederlander in de ruimte. Hij gaat mee met de ruimtereis van [3]#BlueOrigin van [4]#JeffBezos . Oliver is onderweg naar Texas, waar de lancering dinsdag plaatsvindt. [5]https://t.co/hMsJWorRQK [6]pic.twitter.com/5Xl3mqSAJt — Bright (@Bright) [7]July 15, 2021
Believe it or not, the anonymous moneybags who bid [8]$28m for a ticket on the same flight dropped out due to “scheduling conflicts,” and will go up in a later trip.
The runner-up of the auction – Joes Daemen – was offered and took the opportunity to bag the now vacant place, though opted to give the ticket to his son, Oliver. The bid amount was not disclosed.
[9]
Daemen is the CEO of Somerset Capital Partners, a private-equity investment firm in the Netherlands, [10]according to Dutch news channel RTL Nieuws.
[11]
[12]
At least some of the money from the auction will go to Blue Origin’s non-profit firm Club for the Future, which will donate $1m to 19 charities. “We thank the auction winner for their generous support of Club for the Future and are honored to welcome Oliver to fly with us on New Shepard,” Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, [13]said in a statement.
“This marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space.”
[14]
Oliver graduated from high school last year, and has taken a gap year to pursue a private pilot’s license. He was accepted into the University of Utrecht to study physics and innovation management, and is said to have been fascinated by space, the Moon, and rockets since he was four.
[15]Richard Branson uses two planes to make 170km round trip
[16]Jeff Bezos names the fourth person for the first New Shepard flight: Wally Funk
[17]Bezos v Branson: Battle of the wannabe Space Barons as Virgin Galactic cleared by FAA to start flying customers
[18]Wanna feel old? It is 10 years since the Space Shuttle left the launchpad for the last time
Bezos and the gang won’t be in space for long; they’re only going a smidgen beyond the Kármán line, the 100km or 62-mile point above sea level, before coming straight back to terra firma. The whole journey is expected to last only ten minutes or so. ®
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[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/wally_funk_is_going_to_space/
[2] https://twitter.com/Bright/status/1415694105141727233
[3] https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlueOrigin?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[4] https://twitter.com/hashtag/JeffBezos?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://t.co/hMsJWorRQK
[6] https://t.co/5Xl3mqSAJt
[7] https://twitter.com/Bright/status/1415694105141727233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/14/blue_origin_auction/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YPFYwg19DT4MK97nAaHWrQAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/tech/artikel/5242020/nederlandse-student-wordt-jongste-astronaut-ooit
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPFYwg19DT4MK97nAaHWrQAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YPFYwg19DT4MK97nAaHWrQAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://www.blueorigin.com/news-archive/first-customer-on-new-shepard
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YPFYwg19DT4MK97nAaHWrQAAAFY&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/12/virgin_galactic_successful_crewed_flight/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/wally_funk_is_going_to_space/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/29/virgin_galactic/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/09/sts-135/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I'd rather not talk about the experiences I had at that age, I'd get banned.
You were lucky to have a freefall experience! At 18 all I had is to eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat me around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if I was lucky!
You had hot gravel? You soft Southern la-de-da! We had to eat our gravel cold ! And we had to pick out all t'bluntest bits to give to our ma, who would, if we were lucky, regurgitate them into our waiting beaks... ah no, wait, I'm getting confused with baby birds again. Never mind.
"You had hot gravel?"
You guys had gravel?
Your dad had a bottle? Absolute luxury. All my Dad had was a rusty lid off of a tin can!
Did you dream about that freefall experience all your life/since the age of 4?
My 18th birthday was a company (burr brown) pub party because it was the first time they'd made a profit. I wouldn't have went except a guy from stores was going and he was born the same day in the same town and I wanted to investigate him. He got off with a 28 year old barmaid who he'd been screwing for a while.
I just got free drinks. I had a wee round table in front of me full of free drinks. I'm creative though, so the drinks were in a rainbow of colours.
Red and yellow and pink and green
Purple and orange and blue
I can drink a rainbow
Drink a rainbow
Drink a rainbow too
Disclaimer: I can also spew a rainbow
Time to change the rules
These are not astronauts, these are pay loads. After all, nobody gets pilot wings being a passenger on an airplane.
Re: Time to change the rules
To be fair, Wally's an astronaut ... but on this trip, she's just a passenger on board what is in essence a Vomit Comet taken to it's illogical conclusion.
Perhaps we should change the "been into space" meaning from "poked nose above Kármán Line" to something more along the lines of "entered stable orbit requiring engine firing to return to Earth".
Re: Time to change the rules
Orbit is about 30x as difficult as space so I am a bit of a snob about orbit compared to space. I am sure there have been plenty of mission specialists who were not pilots. They were effectively cargo on the way up and down but did useful research and maintenance while in space. I am quite happy calling them astronauts along with pilots in pressure suits who flew experimental aircraft to over 80km altitude without performing scientific research with their other hands.
$1M to 19 charities is more than I have ever done and probably exceeds the sum of everyone else here too. Although "space tourist" may be a more accurate term I am not going to get angry about Jeff+fellow travellers getting called astronauts. The world is far from perfect but please try to see some of the good bits rather than focusing entirely on the bad and spending a shortened life being angry all the time.
Re: Time to change the rules
As I said, Wally's an astronaut. Did the training, should have had the oportunity to go into space decades ago. The other three are just tourists ... not even that, really. What is the proper noun for a rider of amusement park rides?
The payload specialists & etc. who spend time in space are definitely astronauts, they've been through the training and spent enough time up there to do meaningful work. I would say the early test pilots in the astronaut programs are also included. But the three pure "look at me, I'm rich!" tourists? Not so much.
Who is angry? Just musing on the obvious need for the English Language to mutate a little bit once again.
Blue Origin Ticket
Blue Origin Ticket
Anyone interested?
This may be of interest to one of you. A friend of mine has a ticket
for a flight on Blue Origin. He paid $28 million, but he didn't
realise when he bought it that it was going to be the same day as his
Covid 19 postponed wedding. If you are interested, he is looking for
someone to take his place.
It's at Pontypridd Registry Office, at 4.30pm. The Bride's name is
Megan, she's 29, about 5'4", quite pretty, has her own income and
is a really good cook.
only SOME of the 28 mill is going to charity?
"At least some of the money from the auction will go to Blue Origin’s non-profit firm Club for the Future, which will donate $1m to 19 charities."
So Bezos the richest scumbag man in the work will pocket most of the 27 mill left? Oh god we are so screwed by the rich.
Re: only SOME of the 28 mill is going to charity?
I think that was 1 million to 19 charities EACH (so 19 million total). But yeah, that still leaves a cool 8 million.
There's been days I've had less income. (over 12.000 and counting so far)
Re: only SOME of the 28 mill is going to charity?
Just days? There have been entire years for me ... Decades, in fact (the first two were particularly bad).
"Now I'll become the youngest astronaut ever because I'm 18 years old"
No, you'll become the youngest astronaut ever because your dad is a multimillionaire willing to spend millions on a brief joyride for his spoilt son.
It'll be the best 3 minutes of your life, until you get to university and find an attractive someone who's impressed with your "I've been to space" brags.
Source of wealth
Jeff is wealthy, because he didn't share the value workers have created with them. His company also does not seem to pay their fair share of tax.
There is a word in a dictionary that describes such person.
All I got when I was 18 was a very brief freefall experience on Oblivion at Alton Towers.