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Saturday Night Live series actor Pete Davidson will travel to the edge of space next week on a Blue Origin spaceflight, the company said on Monday.
Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, said on Monday that it will launch its fourth flight with human passengers on March 23. Mr. Davidson will be one of six passengers on the company’s New Shepard rocket for its 20th flight.
Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the richest people in the world, was the passenger of the company. first manned flight last July. Earlier that month, another private spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, recruited its founder, Richard Branson. to the edge of space and back.
Mr. Davidson, 28, joined the cast of “Saturday Night Live” in 2014. He has also appeared in movies including the 2020 semi-autobiographical film “The King of Staten Island”. He could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday.
A Blue Origin spokesperson said Monday that Mr. Davidson will fly as an “honorary guest” while the other five passengers are paying customers. The spokesperson did not say how much others were charged to join the plane.
Mr. Davidson will be the last celebrity passenger to travel to the edge of space with Blue Origin.
In October, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, 90, became the oldest person to go into space and cross the Kármán line, the widely recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space, about 62 miles above the planet’s surface. Mr. Shatner shared his New Shepard rocket with three other passengers on a mission that took about 10 minutes.
In December, Michael Strahan, co-host of “Good Morning America”, joined a Blue Origin flight with five other people.
The flight carrying Mr Davidson is scheduled to depart from Blue Origin’s West Texas launch site at 8:30 am local time on March 23.
Blue Origin said Monday that in addition to Mr. Davidson, there will be five more passengers on the flight: Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen and George Nield.
Mr. Allen is a former general manager of party supply store Party America. Mr. Hagle is chairman and CEO of Tricor International, a residential and commercial real estate development company. Ms. Hagle founded the non-profit group SpaceKids Global. Mr. Kitchen is professor of strategy and entrepreneurial practice at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Dr. Nield is president of Commercial Space Technologies. From 2008 to 2018, he served as an assistant manager for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency that regulates commercial launches such as Blue Origin’s.
Kenneth Chang contributing reporting.
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