Blue Origin launched its 15th space tourism flight today (Oct. 8), sending six people on a brief trip to the final frontier, including a mystery passenger who only revealed his identity after the flight.

The company's New Shepard vehicle lifted off from Blue Origin's West Texas launch site today at 9:40 a.m. EDT (1340 GMT; 8:40 a.m. local Texas time), kicking off a suborbital flight known as NS-36.

Everything went according to plan for Blue Origin. New Shepard's first stage came back to Earth for a vertical, powered landing about 8 minutes after launch, and the autonomous vehicle's capsule followed suit several minutes later, touching down under parachutes in the Texas desert.

Flying on that capsule were franchise-industry executive Jeff Elgin, media entrepreneur Danna Karagussova, elec

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