Blue Origin has flown a crew of four onboard a New Shepard rocket on an 11-minute long suborbital spaceflight. It was the first time humans fly onboard the vehicle, making its sixteenth flight since its debut in April 2015.
Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark were aboard the crew capsule for the flight, along with 82-year old Wally Funk, who is an accomplished female pilot, instructor, and air accident investigator, and a member of what was unofficially known as the “Mercury 13”, a group of women that passed the same physiological tests to become an astronaut that the male “Mercury 7″ did.
While Wally Funk became the oldest person ever in space, surpassing John Glenn at age 77, she was joined by the youngest person ever in space. 18-year old Oliver Daemen, the son of the second-highest bidder in the auction for a seat on this flight, joining the NS-16 crew after the winning bidder (with a $28 million bid) chose to take a later flight, citing “schedule conflicts.”