Jeff Bezos is Headed to Space on Tuesday with Blue Origin

It’s been a billionaire’s race to get to space with Sir Richard Branson being the first earlier this month.

Now this Tuesday, Blue Origin is launching Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to space too.

After 15 successful test flights without people on board, Blue Origin is sending off its first human spaceflight with Bezos on board.

57-year old Bezos, his brother Mark, aerospace pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen will be making the flight to the edge of space from near a small town in the West Texas
desert. The spacecraft will have microgravity for a couple minutes, and then quickly return to Earth.

Bezos’ brother, Mark Bezos, age 53, was the second announced passenger for the first human flight. He is a volunteer firefighter residing in Scarsdale, New York. Mark Bezos said in a Blue Origin video that he “wasn’t even expecting” his brother “to be on the first flight,” let alone himself as well.

Funk is a female aviation pioneer and, at 82, will become the oldest person to fly in space.

18-year-old Daemen wasn’t supposed to be on the flight and is taking the place of an anonymous person who bid $28 million for the last seat on this flight in a public auction last month.
Blue Origin says the person could not make the flight “due to scheduling conflicts” and is instead deferring to a later launch.

Daemen’s father, Joes, was a bidder in the public auction who Blue Origin said “had secured a seat on the second flight.” When the other bidder backed out, the company “moved him up,” a Blue Origin spokesperson told CNBC.

Blue Origin’s mission is to create “a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth.”

According to Bezos, Tuesday’s flight is the next step toward achieving that goal.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.