Michael Strahan set for space mission
“Good Morning America” co-host Michael Strahan is going to space next month.
Strahan, 50, will join Laura Shepard Churchley, the eldest daughter of astronaut Alan Shepard, on the Dec. 9 mission aboard the New Shepard, a spacecraft named after her father and the first American in space.
The Blue Origin flight, the company headed by Jeff Bezos, will also carry four paying customers and will be the third by the New Shepard craft this year to shuttle humans to space. The 10-minute flight will launch from West Texas carrying six people, two more than the previous two flights this year with humans aboard.
Similar to previous jaunts, Strahan’s flight is likely to include about three minutes of weightlessness and a view of the curvature of the Earth.
Strahan, who played for 15 years in the NFL with the New York Giants, reported on the first Blue Origin flight for “Good Morning America.”
“I want to go to space,” Strahan told “GMA.” “I think being there at the first launch, it really was mind-blowing.”
Damon co-writing book:
Matt Damon has some big-name endorsers for a book he has out March 1 about access to safe water.
Former President Bill Clinton and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Muhammad Yunus are among those providing blurbs for “The Worth of Water,” which the actor worked on with civil and environmental engineer Gary White.
“We’re excited to have written this book together, and we can’t wait to share the story of what happens when a movie actor and a civil engineer team up to try and take on the global
water crisis,” Damon and White said in a statement Tuesday.
Spacey ordered to pay for show losses:
Kevin Spacey and his production companies must pay the studio behind “House of Cards” more than $30 million because of losses brought on by his firing for sexual misconduct, according to an arbitration decision made final Monday.
A document filed in
Los Angeles Superior Court requesting a judge’s approval of the ruling says that the arbitrators found that Spacey violated his contract’s demands for professional behavior by “engaging certain conduct in connection with several crew members in each of the five seasons that he starred in and executive produced House of Cards.”
MRC, the studio behind “House of Cards,” had to halt production of
the show’s sixth season, rewrite it and shorten it from 13 to eight episodes to meet deadlines, resulting in tens of millions in losses, the document said.
His attorneys argued that Spacey’s actions were not a substantial factor in the show’s losses.
Writer Aykroyd dies:
Peter Aykroyd, 66, an Emmy-nominated actor and writer on “Saturday Night Live” for the 1979-80 season who later worked with older brother, Dan, on everything from a TV show about the paranormal to such films as “Dragnet” and “Coneheads,” has died.
In a statement Monday, Dan Aykroyd cited the medical examiner in Spokane, Washington, and said his brother “succumbed to septicemia from an internal infection precipitated by an untreated abdominal hernia.”