William Shatner, Captain Kirk from “Star Trek”, fulfills his dream of going to space at the age of 90 in a Blue Origin capsule
Photo: BLUE ORIGIN / copyright
Hollywood actor William Shatner became the oldest person to go into space on Wednesday after a trip in the suborbital capsule Blue Origin.
Shatner, 90, who played Captain James T. Kirk in movies and television series “Star Trek” (“Voyage to the stars” in Spanish), he was very excited when he descended from the capsule.
“It’s unbelievable, unbelievable!”said Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and developer of the Blue Origin program. “I am so full of emotions from what just happened. It’s extraordinary, ”he said, remarkably moved.
“I don’t know what it might look like to the world, but it seems to me that I’m just like a child playing on the seashore while the great ocean of truth lay unknown before me,” he continued.
He took off from the Texas desert with three other people. The mission lasted about 10 minutes.
On the trip, they experienced a brief period of weightlessness when ascending at maximum altitude from 100 kilometers. From there it is possible to see the curvature of the Earth through the large windows of the capsule.
With Shatner were Audrey Powers, vice president of Blue Origin; Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of the satellite imagery company Planet; and Glen De Vries, executive of the French corporation for healthcare software Dassault Systèmes.
They had a couple of days of training, although there is nothing really important to them during the flight other than enjoying it. The rocket and capsule system, known as New Shepard, it is completely automatic.
Blue Origin flight director Nicholas Patrick said the quartet nonetheless needed to know what to do in the unlikely event of an emergency; and recognize (and not be disturbed by) the normal bumps and noises of space flight.
“The third thing the training does is teach the crew how to behave in Zero G (zero gravity): how to move around the cockpit without colliding or hitting each other, what handles to use, the kinds of things they can expect and their answer to them ”, explained the ex-NASA astronaut.
The second
This was the second flight with New Shepard crew.
The first, carried out on July 20, brought Bezos, his brother Mark, the Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen and the famous aviator Wally Funk.
The 82-year-old Funk was able to claim the record for the oldest person in space, a title that will now be awarded to Shatner, assuming their mission will pass without incident and that they will rise above Earth’s atmosphere.
The launch comes amid claims that Blue Origin has a toxic work culture and did not adhere to proper safety protocols.
The allegations, mostly anonymous made by former and current employees, have been energetically denied.
“That has not been my experience at Blue,” responded Audrey Powers, head of mission and flight operations.
“We are extremely thorough, from the early days until now, when we begin our flights with humans. Safety has always been our top priority. “
Shatner is the first person to go from the space version of Star Trek to reality, but three NASA astronauts have made the opposite journey.
Astronaut Mae Jemison appeared in an episode of the television sequel to “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” While Mike Fincke and Terry Virts appeared in the final episode of “Enterprise,” the Star Trek prequel series,
Similar case to Gene Roddenberry, creator of the franchise, and James Doohan, the actor who played Montgomery “Scotty” Scott in the original series of the 1960s and later films. Their ashes were sent into space.
Although Bezos has invited a few people to fly on the New Shepard, you usually have to pay to travel.
And while his rival in space tourism, Richard Branson, has priced the ticket for his Virgin Galactic rocket plane ($ 250,000), the Amazon founder does not disclose the fees paid by the likes of Boshuizen and De Vries.
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