Amazon founder, world richest man: Jeff Bezos on the emotional journey of going to space with his brother, Nicholas Rice

Jeff Bezos going to space

“We had some really good, quality time there,” Jeff Bezos said of traveling outside of Earth with his brother Mark.

Jeff Bezos and his brother Mark had the ultimate bonding experience when they traveled to outer space together.

While chatting with CBS This Morning shortly after their voyage outside of Earth Tuesday, Jeff, 57, opened up about what it means to share the incredible moment with his younger brother.

“Clearly it’s a bonding moment for the two of you. Did you have a moment with the two of you up there?” co-host Gayle King asked the brothers in an interview that aired Wednesday morning.

“We had a couple of those moments,” the Amazon founder said. “We had about, I don’t know, 25 minutes on the ground, with the crew capsules, sealed. So it’s just the four of us in there, and my brother and I, we picked seats so that we could see each other from our seats … We had some really good, quality time there.”

#BlueOrigin’s successful flight to space was a family affair as Jeff Bezos was accompanied by his brother, volunteer firefighter Mark Bezos.@GayleKing asked them why their trip to space was more emotional than they thought it would be.

Before the epic trip, Jeff and Mark, 53, received a message from their sister Christina, which was read to them by mission control.

“Now hurry up and your a– back down here so I can give you a huge hug. We love you and Godspeed,” she said.

“I actually teared up right there in the capsule,” Jeff said of their sister’s sweet words. “It was so heartfelt and, you know, she talked about some of the things we did as kids. It was a very sweet message.”

During the launch, Bezos wore a Blue Origin feather-logo necklace, a memento he gave to his mother Jacklyn when he returned to Earth.

The mission was the first space flight with humans on board for Blue Origin, the aerospace manufacturing and spaceflight company founded by the billionaire in 2000.

The Bezos brothers were accompanied by a record-breaking group that included both the oldest and the youngest person to ever fly in space: 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, respectively.

Daemen is a Dutch student who plans to attend the University of Utrecht in September to study physics and innovation management.

Funk, meanwhile, is a trailblazing aviator who’s been waiting for a chance to head into orbit since the 1960s, when she was part of the Mercury 13, a group of women who tested to become astronauts.

Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, announced his journey to space in early June, saying at the time that it had been a dream of his since he was 5 years old.

“I’m excited. People keep asking me if I’m nervous. I’m not really nervous. I’m excited. I’m curious. I want to know what we’re going to learn,” he told CBS This Morning on Monday. “We’ve been training. This vehicle’s ready. This crew is ready. This team is amazing. We just feel really good about it.”

After selecting his brother and Funk to join him, Bezos left the fourth and final seat on the flight open for the winner of an auction, for which the proceeds would go to Club for the Future, Blue Origin’s foundation that supports that encourages STEM careers “to help invent the future of life in space.”

Though an anonymous bidder put down a $28 million winning bid, the person ultimately opted to fly on a future mission due to scheduling conflicts, and Daemen was selected in their place.

Daemen is a Dutch student who plans to attend the University of Utrecht in September to study physics and innovation management.

Funk, meanwhile, is a trailblazing aviator who’s been waiting for a chance to head into orbit since the 1960s, when she was part of the Mercury 13, a group of women who tested to become astronauts.

“I got a hold of NASA four times. I said, ‘I want to become an astronaut.’ But nobody would take me,” she said in a clip posted to Bezos’ Instagram account earlier this month. “I didn’t think that I would ever get to go up.”

According to the official website, the New Shepard seats six astronauts, and since the ship is “fully autonomous,” there is no pilot, and everyone is a passenger. The reusable vehicle takes 11-minute flights into space, “designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space.”

Bezos’ flight comes just nine days after fellow billionaire Sir Richard Branson took his first trip to space aboard the VSS Unity spacecraft, Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed flight test.

Branson, 70, took off alongside five others from Sierra County, New Mexico on an hour-long journey to and from suborbital space on July 11.

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