The 18-year-old student Oliver Damen will fly on the New Shepard spacecraft of the founder of Amazon and the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos, according to the website of the company Blue Origin, which organizes the flight.
The young man will take the place of a patron who wished to remain anonymous, who won a charity auction by donating $ 28 million to space exploration through the Club for the Future organization associated with Blue Origin. The man refused to fly because of inconsistencies in the schedule.
According to Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, Damen represents a new generation of people who will build a road to space. A flight on New Shepard will fulfill the childhood dream of a young man who has been interested in space since the age of four. If the trip takes place, he will become the youngest person who has been in space.
Damen is a student and the son of the CEO of the Dutch private investment company Somerset Capital Partners, Joes Damen.
Bezos ' Blue Origin flight is scheduled to take place on July 20. According to the plan, the ship will launch from the spaceport in Texas and will rise to an altitude of 105 kilometers from the surface of the planet, on average it should take 10-15 minutes. The billionaire is going to take his younger brother and 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk with him. She was trained back in the 1960s, but then the flights were canceled, and she never visited space.
Marina Sovina
