Madison Kwiecinski 

News Editor 

Mvk5945@psu.edu 

Pete Davidson, a man best known for his performances on “Saturday Night Live” or, more recently, his drama with Kanye West, is going to space. Davidson will be spending an entire 11 minutes in space aboard the Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Davidson, age 28, joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2014 and recently starred in the vaguely autobiographical film The King of Staten Island.

Since Bezos founded the company in 2000, Blue Origin has had an overall mission of working toward a future in which millions of people could live and work from space in a way that would benefit earth. Jeff Bezos was aboard the first crew that flew in his rocket ship, the New Shepard. 

The New Shepard has sent 14 people to space so far, with flights having begun in 2021. The ship launched in July for the first time last year, and then again in October and December. The New Shepard has a current capacity of six people, and so far only one of the launches has flown at full capacity. 

Blue Origin is hoping to follow up last year’s three flights with more than twice the number of people entering space in 2022. Among them will be none other than Pete Davison. He will be aboard the New Shepards fourth flight containing human passengers when the ship launches on March 23. 

A spokeswoman for Blue Origin Stated on March 15 that Mr. Davidson would be flying as “an honorary guest,” while the other five passengers who will be aboard the flight are paying customers of the space travel company. She did not disclose how much the other passengers had paid to join the flight. 

Davidson will be the most recent, but not the only, celebrity to travel to space on the New Shepard. In October of 2021, actor William Shatner, most recognized from his performance in Star Trek, became the oldest person to ever travel into space, crossing the Kármán line at the age of 90. The Kármán line is the commonly recognized boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space. The line is approximately located 62 miles above Earth’s surface. 

Davidsons flight is scheduled to take off on March 23 at 8:30 a.m. local time, from the launch site located in West Texas. The five other passengers aboard the flight will be: Marty Allen, Sharon and Marc Hagle, Jim Kitchen, and George Nield. 

Dr. Nield was the Associate Administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration from 2008 to 2018. The administration is the federal agency that regulates commercial space launches such as Blue Origin’s. Dr. Nield is currently the President of Commercial Space Technologies. 

The New Shepard will be launching soon with the recently announced crew aboard. The Shepard may soon be accompanied by another ship of the same type, and the company has alluded to another operational ship being the key to enabling more flights taking place in 2022.