Who will travel aboard the Blue Origin spacecraft on Thursday?

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Pete Davidson was initially set to be the next name to make headlines for a flight aboard the suborbital space tourism rocket being developed by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, after the commercial space company had launched several other famous faces on its previous flights.

But the comedian abruptly quit the job after a schedule change pushed the trip away again a week. His seat was given to longtime company employee Gary Lay, the chief engineer of the rocket he will be flying on. Lai will be joined by five paying agents who had the means to bid an undisclosed amount for one of the crew’s coveted capsule seats.

The New Shepard launch vehicle was scheduled to take off on Tuesday morning, but the company said it was expecting strong winds at its facilities near Van Horn, Texas at that time. Blue Origin is now targeting Thursday at 8:30 a.m. Central time. Those interested in capturing the event – which is expected to look like Blue Origin’s three previous sub-orbital flights – can tune in to Blue Origin webcast Thursday morning.

The trip will be short. It’s a round trip of approximately 10 minutes that will take off as the rocket fires its engines and reaches a speed of more than three times the speed of sound as it propels the crew capsule more than 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. Passengers will experience a few minutes of weightlessness and sweeping views of the planet below, before gravity pulls them back to Earth and the capsule deploys parachutes to ensure a gentle landing near the launch site.

It’s not immediately clear how much stress the customers who have paid for this task have been, and Blue Origin hasn’t revealed a fixed ticket price. But we do know that at least one passenger won an auction to buy an airline ticket alongside Bezos last year for $28 million. (However, this passenger did not end up flying on Bezos’ flight.) We also know that another player in the sub-orbital space tourism game, Virgin Galactic, is selling their seats for $450,000 a piece. Whether commuters pay a few hundred thousand dollars or a few million, it’s safe to say that these tasks won’t be within reach of the average consumer anytime soon.

Here’s a look at some of the upcoming space tourists who are scheduled to blast off on the Blue Origin mission on Thursday.

Lay, the only non-paying passenger on Thursday’s sub-orbital flight, was among Blue Origin’s first 20 employees after joining the company in 2004.

He has been credited as a “New Shepard system engineer,” and holds multiple patents related to the launch vehicle, according to a statement from Blue Origin. During his time as an undergraduate at Cornell University, Lai studied under the supervision of prolific The late astronomer Carl Sagan.

Lay will be the second Asian-American passenger to make a trip to the edge of space in a suborbital spaceflight, after Virgin Galactic employee and Indian-American flight engineer Sirisha Bandla joined Richard Branson on board. space flight last year. Industry is working Suddenly in societal issues For being largely available to whites, males and the affluent, even now.

Marty Allen is an angel investor and former CEO of a party supply store and closet design company.

The Pennsylvania native now lives in California. In an interview with Philadelphia-based Local news station WPVI-TVAllen said that visiting space has been his childhood dream.

“I’ve loved flying since I was a kid,” he said. “I used to make and play with rockets as a kid. I have always dreamed of space.”

Allen added that each passenger got a small bag to take on the sub-tropical flight, and revealed that he packs his car with a 60-foot-by-10-foot American flag to bring with him on the trip.

“I’m going to take it with me, and when I get home, I’m going to build a really big mast on my property and fly that flag,” Allen told local news outlets.

Jim Kitchen is an entrepreneur and faculty member at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler School of Business, where he teaches classes on how to start “social entrepreneurship and fundraising projects.” According to his university biography.

Passionate traveler documents his travels InstagramKitchen has visited all 193 member states of the United Nations. But he, like the other passengers, says visiting space was an old dream.

“One of my early childhood memories was sitting on my mom’s lap on the beach in Florida and watching the launch of the Apollo mission, just looking up and seeing that rocket soar into space,” Kitchen said. Interview With the United Nations University Business School Publication.

While he had already seen a lot of Earth from below, he said he was really excited to see the planet from above.

“Given everything that’s going on in the world right now, seeing this limitless planet from space is really important to me,” Kitchen said.

George Nield is President and Founder of Commercial Space Technologies, A company that aims to promote and facilitate commercial space activities. He previously worked as an associate administrator for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, according to Blue Origin, where he was responsible for licensing and regulating commercial launch activities.

While most of his career has been spent on the regulatory side of the fledgling space tourism sector, Nield is excited about finally being able to experience the “magic” of flight firsthand.

He wrote on March 14: “Some people asked me why I wanted to go on a sub-orbital space flight.” tweet. Here is my answer: to see the black sky and the curvature of the Earth, and to experience the ‘magic’ of weightlessness.

Sharon Hagel and her husband, Mark Hagel, will take off on a flight Thursday — making them the first couple to travel together on a commercial space flight.

It is SpaceKids Global, a non-profit organization that works to encourage students – especially young girls – to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (so-called STEAM programmes). The organization hosts national essay writing competitions Speaking posts are organized in schools with the aim of inspiring the next generation to pursue careers in the space industry.

Sharon Hagel It aims to experience spaceflight across all three companies currently operating in the arena: Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic, each with SpaceKids Global Biography.

Mark Hagel is the CEO of a residential and commercial real estate development company headquartered in the Orlando, Florida area.

About fifteen years ago, Huggles booked tickets for a future Virgin Galactic flight after they celebrated their wedding anniversary by experiencing nearly weightlessness on a Zero Gravity Corp plane. Florida Today local newspaper.

Now that the couple’s dream of trying spaceflight is starting to pay off, Mark Hagel told Florida Today, “I can’t even tell you how excited we are.”

“We are very proud to be able to do this,” he added. “And we really enjoy it.”