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William Shatner is heading to the edge of space aboard New Shepard, Blue Origin’s second flight with three other passengers on Oct. 12, 2021. Mr. Shatner will be on board the New Shepard for the 15-minute civilian flight. When he completes the flight, Mr. Shatner, 90, will hold the record as the oldest person to fly to space.
The tourist rocket by Blue Origin is a private space company owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon. Shatner will join Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president, Glen de Vries, a co-founder of the clinical research software Medidata, and Mr. Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of the Planet Labs – a satellite imagery firm.
According to TMZ sources, it is not clear how much Shatner is paying for his spot onboard New Shepard, but the first Blue Origin civilian seat given to Daemen was for over $20 million.
Blue Origin launched its first flight to space in July with Mr. Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, 82, a pilot, an 18-year-old Dutch student. Ms. Funk, 82, was denied a chance to become an astronaut in the 1960s because of her gender and is the second oldest passenger to space.
The 16-story-tall rocket will launch to roughly 63 miles altitude, but it will not reach orbit and release its gumdrop-shaped crew capsule. Instead, passengers in this flight will experience four minutes of weightlessness in microgravity. The New Shephard booster will return for a vertical landing a few miles from the launch site, and a few minutes later, the crew capsule under a set of parachutes.
New Shepard is Blue Origin’s centerpiece of its space tourism and is one of a few spacecraft offering flight to space for wealthy passengers in the looming space tourism industry. Mr. Bezos said that booked tickets are worth over $100 million but did not disclose the ticket prices of private seat bookings.
Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the “Star Trek” film series said, on Twitter, that he can now say he will be a “rocket man!”
UPDATE: After a weather delay the launch took place on Wednesday, October 13, at 09:49 AM local time (10:49 AM EST; 07:49 AM PST) and saw the RSS First Step space capsule ascend beyond the Kármán Line – the official boundary of space, 100 km (62 mi) in altitude. The capsule safely returned to earth.
Written by Janet Grace Ortigas
Edited by Cathy Milne-Ware
Sources:
The New York Times: Like Captain Kirk, William Shatner Will Travel to Space (Almost); by Joey Roulette
Space.com: William Shatner eager to see ‘vastness of space’ when he launches with Blue Origin; by Chelsea Gohd
Universe Today: William Shatner Completes his Trip to Space With Blue Origin
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of NASA Flight Opportunities’ Flickr Page – Creative Commons License