[imagesource: Instagram / Oliver Daemen]

Jeff Bezos is scheduled to fly into space on July 20, alongside his brother Mark, aeronautics pioneer Wally Funk, and an unnamed auction winner.

Except, the still anonymous $28 million winning bidder of last month’s public auction had to cancel because of  “scheduling conflicts”, reports CNBC.

If you’re bumping a shot at travelling to space, it must be serious, and not the sort of thing that could have been an email.

Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin did say that the auction winner “has chosen to fly on a future New Shepard mission”.

In his place on the July 20 New Shepard rocket flight will be 18-year-old Oliver Daemen:

Blue Origin described Daemen as the “first paying customer” flying on New Shepard, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that “he 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,” Blue Origin said.

Joes Daemen, the founder and CEO of Somerset Capital Partners, a Dutch private equity firm based in the Netherlands, paid for the seat and gave it to his son.

Father and son are pictured above.

That’s one lucky teenager, and I can only imagine the excitement he is feeling right now.

Bezos is set to one-up his billionaire space race rival. Not only is his rocket ship supposed to fly further than that of Richard Branson’s, but he will also be carrying the oldest person to ever travel to space in 82-year-old Mary Wallace “Wally” Funk.

Branson currently holds that title.

The New Shepard will also be the rocket to take the youngest person up into space – Daemen – as well as having the largest windows in space, allowing all the passengers to really soak up the three minutes of zero gravity, before returning to Earth.

Lastly, there’s something calculated about the date to launch, too.

July 20th marks the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

You got us, Bezos. You got us good.

[source:cnbc]