Shatner to trek to edge of space on Blue Origin rocket
William Shatner, known best from his role as the USS Enterprise’s Capt. James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” TV and film series, is boldly going where Jeff Bezos has gone before.
Shatner, 90, will launch to the edge of space Oct. 12 aboard New Shepard, the tourist rocket built by Blue Origin — the private space company owned by Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
“So now I can say something. Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’” Shatner wrote on Twitter about the news.
The news, first reported on the website TMZ, was confirmed Monday by the company.
Shatner will become the oldest person to fly to space once he completes the flight.
Shatner will be joined by two other paying customers: Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of the satellite imagery firm Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, a co-founder of the clinical research software Medidata. The mission’s fourth passenger will be Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president.
The company launched its first crew of passengers to space in July. The crew for that mission included Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos, Wally Funk, 82, a pilot who was denied a chance to become an astronaut in the 1960s because of her sex, and an 18-year-old Dutch student.
Funk, 82, holds the record as oldest passenger to space.
From Blue Origin’s pad in West Texas, the 16-story-tall rocket will launch to an altitude of 63 miles and release its gumdrop-shaped crew capsule. Passengers experience about four minutes of weightlessness in microgravity. The New Shepard booster will return to Earth for a vertical landing a few miles from where it launched, while the crew capsule will fall back minutes later under a set of parachutes.
The flight will not reach orbit, which requires a much more powerful rocket lifting a spacecraft to a much higher altitude.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard vehicle is the centerpiece of its space tourism business, and Bezos has said it has over $100 million worth of tickets booked already.
The company hasn’t disclosed ticket prices, booking the seats privately instead.