Blue Origin NS-16 was a

sub-orbital spaceflight A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

mission operated by

Blue Origin Blue Origin, LLC is an American private spaceflight, privately funded aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company headquartered in Kent, Washington. Founded in 2000 by Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Am ...

which flew on 20 July 2021. The mission was the sixteenth flight of the company's

New Shepard New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical land ...

integrated

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...

and spacecraft, and its first crewed flight. It carried into space American

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

and Blue Origin founder

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...

, his brother

Mark Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fi ...

, pilot and

Mercury 13 The Mercury 13 were thirteen American women who took part in a privately funded program run by William Randolph Lovelace II aiming to test and screen women for spaceflight. The participants—First Lady Astronaut Trainees (or FLATs) as Jerrie C ...

member

Wally Funk Mary Wallace Funk (born February 1, 1939) is an American aviator, commercial astronaut, and Goodwill Ambassador. She was the first female air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, the first female civilian flight in ...

, and Dutch student

Oliver Daemen Oliver Daemen (born 20 August 2002) is a Dutch space tourist who flew as part of the 20 July 2021, sub-orbital Blue Origin NS-16 spaceflight. At the time of his flight he was 18 years old, and is the youngest person, first teenager, and first p ...

. The flight commenced from Blue Origin's

Corn Ranch Corn Ranch, or Launch Site One, is a spaceport in the West Texas town of Van Horn, Texas. The land parcel was purchased by Internet billionaire Jeff Bezos. Current launch license and experimental permits from the US government Federal Aviation ...

sub-orbital launch site in

West Texas West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Abilene, and Del Rio. No consensus exists on the boundary betwee ...

aboard the third flight of New Shepard booster NS4 and the spacecraft RSS ''First Step'', both having previously flown on NS-14 and NS-15 earlier in the year. Blue Origin NS-16 was the first human spaceflight from the U.S. state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

. Daemen, aged 18, and Funk, aged 82, became the youngest and oldest people to travel to space, respectively, until

William Shatner William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship USS Enterpri ...

took the record of oldest in space at age 90. The flight was approximately 10 minutes, and crossed the

Karman Line Karman or Kármán is a Hungarian surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Harvey Karman (20th century), inventor of the Karman cannula * Janice Karman (born 1954), American film producer, record producer, singer, and voice artist * J� ...

. The mission became the first fully

automated Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

flight with civilian passengers, as well as the first multi-person, internationally-recognized sub-orbital spaceflight.

Crew

Four crewmembers flew on Blue Origin NS-16. Originally, the anonymous winner (later revealed as

Justin Sun Justin Sun (Chinese: 孙宇晨; pinyin: Sūn Yǔchén; born July 30, 1990) is a Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur, and business executive. He is the founder of Tron (founded July 2017), a blockchain DAO ecosystem. Sun is the Permanent Represen ...

) of a US$28 million

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

held by Blue Origin in support of its Club for the Future program was to be the fourth crewmember on RSS ''First Step''. However, the anonymous winner had unspecified scheduling conflicts and was re-manifested for a future New Shepard flight; Oliver Daemen took the vacated position. Oliver's father Joes Daemen, the CEO of private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners, paid for the fourth seat; Joes had come second in the auction for the seat, so after the auction winner (Justin Sun) did not take the seat, it was passed onto Joes, who paid for the seat and gave it to Oliver.

References

{{Blue Origin Space tourism 2021 in spaceflight Test spaceflights Aviation history of the United States Suborbital human spaceflights 2021 in Texas 2021 in aviation July 2021 events in the United States New Shepard missions