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Pete Davidson not going to space after all
The 28-year-old star of Saturday Night Live, who has been in the news recently because of his relationship with Kim Kardashian, is "no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission," Blue Origin said in an announcement late Thursday.
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US actor-comedian Pete Davidson smokes as he arrives for Tubi's The Freak Brothers experience at Fred Segal in Los Angeles on December 6, 2021. (AFP/Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Plot twist: American comedian and actor Pete Davidson isn't going to space next week after all.
The 28-year-old star of Saturday Night Live, who has been in the news recently because of his relationship with Kim Kardashian, is "no longer able to join the NS-20 crew on this mission," Blue Origin said in an announcement late Thursday.
The space company owned by Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos did not elaborate on reasons for Davidson's withdrawal from the trip, which had been planned for March 23 -- an 11-minute jaunt aboard a New Shepard suborbital rocket from the West Texas desert to just beyond the atmosphere, and back again.
The mission itself has now been pushed back six days to March 29, and Blue Origin said it would announce a new sixth member of the crew soon.
The other five are paying customers -- mainly high-net-worth business people -- and if Blue Origin's fourth crewed flight follows the pattern of its previous launches, Davidson's replacement will also be a celebrity guest, flying for free.
Davidson's colorful love life has long been tabloid fodder, but his relationship with reality-star-turned-entrepreneur Kardashian and subsequent feud with her ex-husband, the rapper Kanye West, has garnered even greater attention.
West, legally known as Ye, has made no secret of his anger towards Davidson, burying him alive and holding his severed head in a claymation music video. Such behavior, along with extravagant attempts to win Kardashian back, has been termed abusive by critics.
The Saturday Night Live star will be the only non-paying guest on the voyage aboard the New Shepard rocket, which is set to blast off from the company's Launch Site One in West Texas on March 23.
It will be the fourth human flight for the company, which launched its billionaire founder and owner Jeff Bezos to space on its first crewed mission last summer.
The other crewmates are CEO and investor Marty Allen; husband and wife Sharon and Marc Hagle, who run a nonprofit and business, respectively; teacher and explorer Jim Kitchen, and George Nield, who founded a company that promotes commercial space activity.
The ticket prices remain a secret, as they have since the first flight.
Named after pioneering astronaut Alan Shepard, New Shepard is Blue Origin's reusable, autonomously-flown suborbital rocket system that is capable of crossing the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary of space, 62 miles (100 kilometers) high.
During the 11-minute round trip, passengers experience several minutes of weightlessness and can observe the curvature of the Earth. The capsule floats back to the surface on giant parachutes for a gentle desert landing.
