Blue Origin Engineer to Replace SNL Star Pete Davidson on Space Flight

Davidson will be replaced by engineer Gary Lai.

By Reuters | Updated: 22 March 2022 12:18 IST

Blue Origin Engineer to Replace SNL Star Pete Davidson on Space Flight

Photo Credit: Reuters

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' space tourism venture Blue Origin took off last year

Highlights

SNL comic Pete Davidson recently pulled out after the flight was delayed
The suborbital joyride is expected to last for about 10 minutes
Blue Origin's next flight will take place on March 29

Blue Origin engineer Gary Lai will replace "Saturday Night Live" comic Pete Davidson in the space tourism company's latest flight, it said on Monday.

Davidson had pulled out after the flight, originally meant to launch this week, was postponed to March 29 to run some more pre-flight tests on one of the vehicle's subsystems.

The suborbital joyride, lasting about 10 minutes from liftoff to touchdown, will ascend to about 3,50,000 feet (106 km), treating passengers to a few moments of weightlessness before a descent back to Earth for a parachute landing.

Lai joined Blue Origin in 2004 and is the chief architect of the New Shepard spacecraft, a reusable rocket system that can take astronauts and research payloads to space.

The other passengers include angel investor Marty Allen, real estate veteran Marc Hagle and his wife Sharon Hagle, University of North Carolina professor Jim Kitchen and George Nield, founder-president of Commercial Space Technologies.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

Asus India's Arnold Su joins this week's Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, to talk about how the PC maker is planning to grow its presence in the country. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.