Capt. Kirk reaches final frontier

Shatner, 90, sets record for oldest person in space

Hollywood’s Captain Kirk, 90-year-old William Shatner, blasted into space Wednesday in a convergence of science fiction and science reality, reaching the final frontier aboard a ship built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company.

The “Star Trek” actor and three fellow passengers hurtled to an altitude of 66.5 miles over the West Texas desert in the fully automated capsule, then safely parachuted back to Earth. The flight lasted just over 10 minutes.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience,” an exhilarated Shatner told Bezos after climbing out the hatch, the words spilling from him in a soliloquy almost as long as the flight. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”

He said that going from the blue sky to the utter blackness of space was a moving experience.

Shatner became the oldest person in space, eclipsing the previous record by eight years. The flight included about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curvature of the Earth.

The flight brought priceless star power to Bezos’ space-tourism business, given its built-in appeal to baby boomers, celebrity watchers and space enthusiasts. Shatner starred in TV’S original “Star Trek” from 1966 to 1969, when the U.S. was

racing for the moon, and went on to appear in a string of “Star Trek” movies.

Bezos is a huge “Star Trek” fan and Shatner rode free as his invited guest.

Bezos himself drove the four crew members to the launch pad, accompanied them to the platform high above the ground and cranked the hatch shut after they climbed aboard the 60-foot rocket. He was there to greet them when the capsule floated back to Earth under its brilliant blue-and-red parachutes.

The actor said he was struck by the vulnerability of Earth and the relative sliver of its atmosphere.

“Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see,” he said. “To see the blue color whip by, and now you’re staring into blackness, that’s the thing. The covering of blue, this sheath, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around, we say, ‘Oh, that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it all, and you’re looking into blackness, into black ugliness.”

Shatner said the return to Earth was more jolting than his training led him to expect and made him wonder whether he was going to make it back alive.

Shatner strapped in alongside Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president and former space station flight controller for NASA, and two paying customers: Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer, and Glen de Vries of a 3D software company.

Blue Origin said it plans one more passenger flight this year and several more in 2022.

The flight brought to 597 the number of humans who have flown in space.