|
 Shatner was one of four
passengers to journey for 10 minutes and 17
seconds to the edge of space aboard the white
fully autonomous 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters-tall)
New Shepard spacecraft, which took off from Blue
Origin's launch site about 20 miles (32 km)
outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn.
The crew capsule returned to the Texas desert
from the suborbital flight under parachutes,
raising a cloud of dust. Shatner emerged
gingerly from the capsule in the desert silence,
appearing reflective as the others celebrated by
cheering and popping champagne bottles.
Bezos was on hand and embraced Shatner, who was
wearing a cap and a blue flight suit with the
company's name in white letters on one sleeve.
"What you have given me is the most profound
experience I can imagine," Shatner told Bezos as
the two chatted for several minutes. "I am so
filled with emotion about what just happened."
The all-civilian crew experienced a few minutes
of weightlessness, having traveled about 65.8
miles (106 km) above the Earth's surface -
higher than the internationally recognized
boundary of space known as the Karman Line,
about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth.
It marked the second space tourism flight for
Blue Origin, the company Bezos - the Amazon.com
Inc founder and current executive chairman -
founded two decades ago. Bezos flew aboard the
first one in July.
Shatner - who embodied the promise of space
travel in the classic 1960s TV series "Star
Trek" and seven subsequent films - said he had
prepared himself for experiencing
weightlessness, but was stunned at the dramatic
contrast of the beauty of the blue Earth and the
blackness of space.
"You're looking into blackness, into black
ugliness," Shatner said. "And you look down,
there's the blue down there - and the black up
there - and it's just, there is Mother Earth."
"This is life and that's death, and in an
instant, you know - whoa - that's death,"
Shatner said. "That's what I saw."
"Is that the way death is?" Shatner asked.
Before the flight, each astronaut rang a bell
and then entered the capsule atop the rocketship,
with Bezos closing the hatch. Winds were light
and skies were clear for the launch, conducted
after two delays totaling roughly 45 minutes.
Joining Shatner were former NASA engineer Chris
Boshuizen, clinical research entrepreneur Glen
de Vries and Blue Origin vice president and
engineer Audrey Powers
https://www.blueorigin.com/news/
shatner-powers-announced-ns18.
'BEAM ME UP'
Shatner, who turned 90 in March, has been acting
since the 1950s and remains busy with
entertainment projects and fan conventions. He
is best known for starring as Captain James
Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise on
"Star Trek."
[to top of second column]
|
 During the opening credits of
each episode of the series, he called space "the
final frontier" and promised "to explore strange
new worlds, to seek out new life and new
civilizations, to boldly go where no man has
gone before."
"Beam me up," Shatner's character would tell the
Enterprise's chief engineer Scotty, played by
James Doohan, in a memorable catchphrase when he
needed to be transported to the starship.
Shatner's participation helped generate
publicity for Blue Origin as it competes against
two billionaire-backed rivals - Elon Musk's
SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic
Holdings Inc - to attract customers willing to
pay large sums to experience spaceflight.
The flight represented another important day for
the nascent space tourism industry that,
according to UBS, could reach an annual value of
$3 billion in a decade.
Blue Origin had a successful debut space tourism
flight on July 20, with Bezos and three others
aboard on a trip lasting 10 minutes and 10
seconds. On that flight, pioneering female
aviator Wally Funk
https://www.reuters.com/business/
aerospace-defense/pioneering-female-aviator-wally-funk-is-americas-new-sweetheart-2021-07-20
at age 82 became the oldest person to reach
space. The previous record was set in 1998 when
pioneering astronaut John Glenn returned to
space as a 77-year-old U.S. senator.
Branson inaugurated his space tourism
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/
science/virgin-galactics-branson-ready-space-launch-aboard-rocket-plane-2021-07-11
service on July 11, riding along on a suborbital
flight with six others. SpaceX debuted its space
tourism business
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/
science/spacex-capsule-with-worlds-first-all-civilian-orbital-crew-set-splashdown-2021-09-18
by flying the first all-civilian crew to reach
Earth's orbit in a three-day mission ending
Sept. 18.
In his annual address to world leaders last
month, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
criticized "billionaires joyriding to space
while millions go hungry on earth."
Asked about Shatner's flight, U.N. spokesman
Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday that
Guterres "very much continues to believe what he
said in the General Assembly."
(Reporting by Mike Blake; Additional reporting
by Peter Szekely in New York and Eric M. Johnson
in Seattle; Editing by Will Dunham)
[© 2021 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content |
