Dutch Teen Reveals Hilarious Confession He Made To Jeff Bezos On Space Flight

The Dutch teenager who flew to space with Jeff Bezos has revealed the hilarious confession he made during the flight. Watch them take off here:

Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student, accompanied the Amazon founder on his Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, which took off from Texas, United States, on Tuesday (20 July).

After landing, Bezos thanked Amazon customers for paying for the flight - but it turns out Oliver wasn't one of the millions of shoppers who helped fund it.

Speaking to Reuters about the flight, he said: "I told Jeff, like, I've actually never bought something from Amazon.

"And he was like, 'Oh, wow, it's a long time ago I heard someone say that.'"

PA

Oliver only wound up going on the flight after a $28 million (£20.37 million) auction winner became too busy to make the trip.

Oliver bagged his seat on board the flight as his dad was one of the runners-up in the auction.

He said: "They called and said, 'Are you still interested?' and we were like, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'

"We didn't pay even close to $28 million, but they chose me because I was the youngest and I was also a pilot and I also knew quite a lot about it already."

Alongside the pair was Jeff's brother Mark and 82-year-old Wally Funk - one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as Nasa's Mercury 7 astronauts in the early 1960s but never made it into space because only men were allowed.

It meant that Oliver and Wally simultaneously became the youngest and oldest people to ever have visited space.

The entire flight lasted roughly 11 minutes, with the crew experiencing three to four minutes of zero gravity prior to their capsule making its way back to Earth.

It was the craft's 16th lift-off, but its first to carry human passengers.

Billionaire Bezos became the second person to ride his own rocket into space, following Virgin Galactic's Sir Richard Branson by nine days.

Bezos has dreamt of flying to space since he was a child, and speaking on Monday (19 July) he said he was 'ready not nervous'.

Upon safely landing back on Earth, he said the experience exceeded his expectations.

He said: "Oh my God. My expectations were high, and they were dramatically exceeded.

"The zero Gs may have been one of the biggest surprises, because it felt so normal.

"It felt like, almost like we were as humans evolved to be in that environment, which I know is impossible, but it felt so serene and peaceful and the floating.

"It's actually much nicer than being in full one gravity."

Topics: World News, jeff bezos, space, Amazon

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.

@jakesmassey