An 18-year old physics student has secured a highly coveted seat on a flight to space with Jeff Bezos after a $28 million auction winner pulled out of the trip at the 11th hour.
Bezos' spaceflight company Blue Origin is running the historic flight on Tuesday, July 20, and less than a week before the trip, the firm announced on its website that an unnamed individual had to bow out after winning the auctioned off seat due to "scheduling conflicts".
According to CNN Business, the auction winner will instead take a seat on a future mission to space.
The firm also shared that recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen would be taking the anonymous individual's seat and flying to space on the company's space tourism rocket New Shepard with Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, and 82-year-old pilot Wally Funk.
At 18, Daemen will be the youngest person to travel to space, while Funk will be the oldest.
Blue Origin welcomed the new passenger in a statement, saying: "Today, Blue Origin announced Oliver Daemen will be the first paying customer to fly onboard New Shepard, marking the beginning of commercial operations for the program."
It added: "The winner of Blue Origin’s auction, who has asked to remain anonymous at this time, has chosen to fly on a future New Shepard mission due to scheduling conflicts.
"Club for the Future announced this week the auction gift has enabled Club to donate $1 million to 19 non-profit organizations ($19 million in total), all of which are working to support the future of living and working in space."
A Blue Origin spokesperson said told CNN Business, Daemen "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."
"We're not disclosing how much he paid," the spokesperson added.
A source told the outlet that Daemen's father Joes paid for his son's seat on the flight.
Dad Joes is the founder and CEO of Somerset Capital Partners - an investment company based in the Netherlands.
His teenage son, who will be studying physics at the University of Utrecht in September, said of the upcoming spaceflight in a video posted on social media: "I am super excited to go into space. I've been dreaming about this all my life."
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