A $28M Scheduling Conflict

Way back in 2017, Amazon splashily announced plans for a second headquarters setting off a crazy wooing contests from cities around the U.S. Last month Bezos again splashily announced he'd would be launching into space via his Blue Origin company on July 20 in the first manned commercial trip to space AND would be auctioning a seat on his, umm...interestingly shaped rocket for the historic trip. Naturally, someone very rich (if only to underscore the fact space tourism is only for the uber wealthy) paid $28 million for the privilege of being a part of history and getting to pal around with the world richest man. Great! Everyone's happy and feeling good! To add to the party Bezos also picked 82-year old aerospace pioneer Wally Funk to join them. Funk trained for but never made to space 60 years ago, because, you know, it was the Mad Men era at NASA. 

Then of course on July11 another billionaire Richard Branson beat Bezos to the punch by successfully completing the first fully-crewed commercial flight to the edge of space and briefly holding the entire world's attention (before it shifted to the Euro 2020 final later that day). Something, funnily enough, predicted by the Simpsons, among other things. In the process Branson firmly took the shine off Bezos' upcoming "historic" trip. You can tell team Bezos was pissed...even contesting whether the Virgin Galactic flight even made it to space at all, by getting into technical arguments over the boundaries of space. 

So, now the holder of that Blue Origin ticket just remembered he had an important meeting that day and just can't make it. Yeah, sorry, priorities. He will take advantage of Blue Origin's no-fee change policy and reschedule. The super busy person will be replaced by Oliver Daemen, an 18-year old gap year student and son of one of the losing bidders. “At 18 years old and 82 years young, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk represent the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space,” according to a Blue Origin statement. Hmm...I dunno know. Seems very convenient. By pulling in Daemen, of just barely legal age, at least Blue Origin can say they hold the age category records on both ends in the first-to-space race. 

So, I think this was less a scheduling conflict and more of a Blue Origin PR ploy. Which everyone was okay with. Because let's face it is likely that many of the people willing to pay tens of millions of dollars to fly, sorry...rocket, to space with Bezos for 10 minutes were doing so not just for the experience, but also for the opportunity to network with the world's richest man. It's an investment, perhaps even a business expense. And working with Bezos to make it better for Blue Origin was probably an easy choice.