Here's Why An 18-Year-Old Is Going to Space with Jeff Bezos Tomorrow

Jeff Bezos is set to take off for space tomorrow (July 20) on Blue Origin’s New Shepard.

The entire flight will last for 11 minutes and will reach 2,300-mph.

At the last minute, one of the passengers expected on the excursion dropped out and was replaced by an 18-year-old.

Click inside to find out what happened….

Recent high-school grad Oliver Daemen is now joining Bezos, Bezos‘ brother Mark, and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot.

Oliver is taking the place of an auction winner, who purchased the ticket in the auction for $28 million but can no longer attend due to “scheduling conflicts.” The original auction winner wishes to remain anonymous.

The auction winner will instead fly on a future New Shepard flight.

Blue Origin is calling Oliver their “first paying customer,” adding that “he was a participant in the auction and had secured a seat on the second flight.”

“We moved him up when this seat on the first flight became available,” Blue Origin said.

If you’re wondering how Oliver is so well connected to be able to participate in such a spectacle, he is the son of Somerset Capital Partners CEO Joes Daemen, who paid for the seat but chose to let his son go instead of him. Somerset Capital Partners is a Somerset is a Dutch private equity firm.

With this flight, Oliver is also the youngest person to ever fly to space.

In the gallery of this post, you will find photos of Jeff Bezos with his lunar landing module called Blue Moon, which he introduced as part of Blue Origin’s efforts back in 2019!