Jeff Bezos, the billionaire Amazon founder, successfully lands after riding to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew aboard his company Blue Origin's rocket.
built by his Virgin Galactic firm along with five others and flew to the edge of space and back, making it there ahead of Bezos, who had announced his plans earlier. Virgin Galactic plans to complete two more test flights before it begins flying paying customers to space next year.
Blue Origin also plans to continue flying customers to space, though it has not announced a ticket price or additional details about commercial operations. During a livestream of the launch, Ariane Cornell, Blue Origin’s director of astronaut sales, encouraged interested customers to email the company.Blue Origin did not disclose the winner’s name following the live online auction, but their identity will be revealed soon.
Proceeds from the auction for a spot on Tuesday’s launch went to the Club for the Future foundation, which was founded by Blue Origin and is aimed at promoting science, technology, engineering and math careers. From those proceeds, 19 nonprofit organizations were selected to receive $1-million grants., but the ticket holder deferred the trip, citing scheduling conflicts, according to Blue Origin. They will fly on a future mission.
Daemen, 18, was part of the auction process and was slated for the company’s second crewed flight, Cornell said earlier this week. After the auction winner’s scheduling conflict, the company reached out to Daemen to see if he was available to move up to an earlier flight.The company did not release how much Daemen, the son of a Dutch private equity executive, paid for his spot, or the name of the original auction winner.Before launch, about 100 reporters were gathered at the press site.
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