Six people traveled yesterday to the Blue Origin suborbital rocket. One was Jesús Callejathe first television presenter that crosses the line of Kárman as part of the filming of a documentary. In the same ship another five people flew. Four of them, millionaire businessmen and executives who had paid for the flight. The sixth crewman was an anonymous person. Was An anonymous person because on the Internet there are difficult secrets to maintain.
Context. They are already going 52 people That they fly to the space with Blue Origin since Jeff Bezos, the owner of the company, premiered the small New Shepard rocket with his brother Mark, the aviator Wally Funk and the young Oliver Daemen (the oldest woman, with 82 years, and the youngest man, with 18, in crossing the border of the space).
Taking into account that just 719 people have traveled beyond the 100 kilometers of altitude, Blue Origin’s space tourists begin to be a multitude in the select club of people who have gone to space.
With its flights for millionaires of just 10 minutes, the New Shepard rocket has a growing record of records: the oldest man (William Shatner), the first Mexican (Katya Echazarreta), the first Portuguese (Mário Ferreira), etc. What they had not had until now was an anonymous passenger.
The first suborbinaut without name. Of the 719 people who have flown to space so far, none had done without revealing their name. The astrophysician Jonathan McDowell knows it well, who maintains a database of all space flights in historystarting with Yuri Gagarin on April 12, 1961, and Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight, 23 days later.
When McDowell went to update his database with the crew of the NS-30 mission of Blue Origin, he decided not to settle for the unknown of the sixth traveler (the first stain of the history) and asked his followers (in a tweet now erased) if they could find out who he was.
Most of the answers reproached McDowell having used their influence to try to expose a person who wanted to remain anonymous. Others They wondered If it could be the camera of Jesús Calleja (but why hide his identity, then?). Until, finally, one of McDowell’s followers found who he was.
R. Wilson. Blue Origin had diligently complied with his client’s desire. The mysterious traveler He went out to face discovered In the official photos and videos of the mission, but on the web, on social networks, in the press releases, in the retransmission of the launch, Blue Origin only mentioned the first five passengers with name and surname, adding: “and a sixth crewman whose name has not been revealed.”
What did not help the man to preserve his identity was to have his initial and his last name embroidered in the space suit: R. Wilson. However common the last name Wilson was enough to French YouTuber Ufotinik He will find his full name and news about him on the Internet.
An Australian cryptocurrency. Jesús Calleja mentioned in an interview that an Australian friend had done on the mission. Perhaps he refers to Russell Wilson, founder of the Coinspot cryptocurrency exchange platform, based in a modest Melbourne building.
According to a report of 2023 of the Daily MailWilson leads a discreet life in the city’s suburbs, although he has paid 538 million dollars in dividends. The report includes a photo of the businessman, who already maintained a low profile and avoided public attention, delegating media appearances in his executives while led the company from anonymity and following strict security protocols.
He failed to maintain anonymity then, nor has he achieved it on his trip to space. But McDowell’s efforts for not letting an entry into its database only reinforce the initial idea of this article: space tourists are beginning to be a crowd in the select club of people who have gone to space, so we will see more and more eccentricities above the karm line. After all, career astronauts, those of space agencies, are officials chosen and formed to the extreme for a single thing: act according to the protocols and be predictable in any situation.
Images | Blue Origin

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