Meet The Crew That Will Accompany Jeff Bezos On Tomorrow's Space Trip

Jeff Bezos with the crew who will accompany him to fly into space. (photo: instagram)

JAKARTA - Billionaire Jeff Bezos will launch into space with the Blue Origin spacecraft, New Shepard tomorrow, Tuesday 20 July. Bezos is not alone, in this case, he also brought some of the crew on the journey of the spacecraft.

Bezos has attracted a lot of media attention, but he won't be the only one on the manned flight. He will also bring along his brother, Mark Bezos, Mercury 13 pilot Wally Funk, and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen.

New Shepard is an automated spaceflight system and all crew will be novice astronauts, although Funk is a very experienced aviator with nearly 20,000 flight hours as a pilot and instructor.

However, Blue Origin has not disclosed the official price of seats sold for the spacecraft or its schedule for future flights. The following is a summary of the crew's life journey, which VOI quoted from Space, Monday, July 19.

1. Aged 57, Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. Bezos wanted to go into space as a teenager, but was determined to do so as an entrepreneur and bought the opportunity. The solution was to enter the emerging field of computer science.

He became a billionaire after founding Amazon in 1994, which grew rapidly from a bookseller to general goods and streaming empire that made billions of dollars. Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO a few weeks ago to focus on other ventures, including his aerospace company Blue Origin.

2. Bezos' brother Mark Bezos is known as a millionaire because he owns Amazon shares. 53 years old, he is a former advertising executive and co-founder of the private equity firm HighPost Capital.

Mark is also on the board of the nonprofit Robin Hood, which fights poverty. Jeff Bezos is very close to his brothers including Mark. She recently said on Instagram that she was "blown away" that Jeff asked her to get on the plane.

3. Jeff Bezos will also bring along Wally Funk, a pioneering female aviator who is best known as one of the Mercury 13 missions, the woman NASA tested as an astronaut candidate during the early days of the US space program.

Personally, Bezos invited 82-year-old Funk to join the crew for free, so Funk didn't have to pay for a ticket to the spacecraft.

Funk will become the oldest person to fly in space, beating 77-year-old Mercury astronaut John Glenn when he flew on his second mission aboard NASA's space shuttle Discovery in 1998.

4. Lastly, the crew that Bezos will be bringing tomorrow is 18-year-old college student Oliver Daemen. He studied innovation and physics at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and has wanted to fly into space since the age of four.

Daemen will become the youngest person in space after this mission, beating Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who was 25 when he flew on the Soviet Union's Vostok 2 mission in 1961.