Bezos' Final Passenger to Space Is a Teenager

When Jeff Bezos blasts off for space next week, the flight will be historic on two fronts that are polar opposites. His Blue Origin capsule will include the youngest and oldest people to fly to space, reports CNN. The company announced Thursday that the fourth and final passenger will be 18-year-old Oliver Daemen. It was already known that 82-year-old aerospace pioneer Wally Funk—she was a Mercury mission trainee decades ago—would be aboard. The only other two on Tuesday's flight will be Bezos and his brother Mark.

Daemen is a recent high school graduate who will attend the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands this fall. The BBC reports that he is a physics student and the son of Somerset Partners CEO Joes Daemen. The elder Daemen was originally supposed to be aboard Blue Origin's second flight, but he got bumped up when the still-anonymous winner of an auction for a seat on the first flight had to postpone because of a scheduling conflict. The elder Daemen then gave the seat to his son. (Richard Branson ought to be rooting for a successful Bezos mission.)