Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin names two passengers to fly on next New Shepard flight

Jeff Bezos-led Blue Origin announced the first two members of the next flight of the its spacecraft New Shepard. This will be the 18th flight of New Shepard, which will lift off on October 12.

Named NS-18, the next New Shepard flight will be have a four-man crew. This will include Dr. Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer and co-founder of Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, Vice-Chair, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Dassault Systèmes and co-founder, Medidata.

Names of the remaining two passengers will be declared in coming days.

Taking to Twitter, de Vries expressed his excitement at becoming a part of the next New Shepard flight.

“This is a fulfillment of my greatest childhood dream,” said Dr Chris Boshuizen. “More importantly, though, I see this flight as an opportunity to inspire students to pursue careers in STEM and catalyze the next generation of space explorers. After all, our future of life in space is in their very capable hands.”

“I’ve been passionate about aviation and space for as long as I can remember, and a long-awaited dream of mine is about to become a reality: I’m boarding the New Shepard’s second human flight, Oct. 12,” he wrote in a tweet shortly after the announcement.

Blue Origin said in a statement that it is targeting to commence liftoff at 8:30 am CDT from Launch Site One in West Texas. This will be the second human flight of New Shepard, which completed its first human flight on July 20 with Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, aviation pioneer Wally Funk, and Blue Origin’s first customer, Oliver Daemen on board.