A teenager and a grandmother in space, with Jeff Bezos from Amazon

Billionaire Jeff Bezos has fulfilled his childhood dream.

He flew into space with his brother Mark, 82-year-old Wally Funk, who has been ready for such a flight for sixty years, and eighteen-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen. The flight lasted ten minutes and the rocket reached an altitude of 100 kilometres. The crew could feel weightlessness for a few minutes.

Bezos’ company Blue Origin has thus joined those offering tourist space flights.

BREAKING: Jeff Bezos launches into space aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard pic.twitter.com/M8KvUa8v7E

— Reuters (@Reuters) July 20, 2021

»This isn’t a competition. This is about building a road so that future generations can do incredible things in space,« Jeff Bezos said before the flight.

Bezos, the founder of online sales company Amazon, is the second richest man in the last month to fly into space. The first to do so was Richard Branson, head of Virgin.

Wally Funk, too, had a long-held dream come true: »It doesn’t matter what you are. If you want to do something, you can do it,« she said before the flight.

The experienced pilot wanted to go into space as early as the 1960s, but because she is a woman this did not happen at the time. Now she has finally succeeded, and in doing so has shown many girls around the world that nothing is impossible.

Oliver Daemen, a future physics student at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, became the youngest man to fly into space.

»It was amazing, but at the same time very natural,« he said at a news conference after landing.

Points to Consider

1. Would you like to go to space? 
2. Why womend could not become astronauts in the past? 
3. What is your dream?

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The original version of this article was published on July 21st.

English translation courtesy of JL Flanner, Total Slovenia News, an English language website with news from and about Slovenia.