{"id":10915,"date":"2021-10-12T18:23:28","date_gmt":"2021-10-12T10:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/captain-kirk-heading-to-space-on-blue-origins-second-human-launch\/"},"modified":"2021-10-12T18:23:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T10:23:28","slug":"captain-kirk-heading-to-space-on-blue-origins-second-human-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/captain-kirk-heading-to-space-on-blue-origins-second-human-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Captain Kirk\u2019 heading to space on Blue Origin\u2019s second human launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"\"
Space industry entrepreneur Chris Boshuizen, actor William Shatner, Blue Origin vice president Audrey Powers, and businessman Glen de Vries pose in their flight suits ahead of their launch on a suborbital flight to the edge of space. Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fifty-five years after his debut as Captain Kirk in the cult-classic TV series Star Trek, William Shatner, now 90, is finally launching to the final frontier for real Wednesday, becoming the oldest person to fly in space courtesy of Jeff Bezos and his rocket company Blue Origin.

Shatner will join Australian Chris Boshuizen, founder of Earth-observation company Planet Labs, microbiologist Glen de Vries, and Blue Origin\u2019s Audrey Powers for blastoff on a 10-minute up-and-down flight out of the discernible atmosphere to the edge of space.

Running a day late because of high winds, liftoff from Blue Origin\u2019s West Texas launch site is targeted for 9:30 a.m. EDT.

In an interview with Gayle King om CBS Mornings, Shatner joked he\u2019ll be able to brag about being the oldest person to fly in space. But he said his actual motivation was \u201cto have the vision, I want to see space, I want to see the Earth, I want to see what we need to do to save Earth.\u201d

\u201cI want to have a perspective that hasn\u2019t been shown to me before,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m interested in seeing.\u201d

If all goes well, the New Shepard will carry the crew to an altitude of just above 62 miles, the internationally recognized \u201cboundary\u201d between the discernible atmosphere and space. The passengers will enjoy three to four minutes of weightlessness \u2014 and jaw-dropping views \u2014 before a parachute descent to Earth.<\/p>\n

\"\"
William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Credit: CBS\/Paramount<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYes, it\u2019s true; I\u2019m going to be a \u2018rocket man!’\u201d Shatner tweeted when Blue Origin revealed he was joining the crew.

\u201cWelcome Mr. Shatner to our flight crew! We\u2019re going to have so much fun this week!\u201d Boshuizen tweeted back.

The flight will mark just the second crewed launch of a New Shepard capsule since Bezos, his brother Mark, 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk and Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen took off July 20 on the company\u2019s first such flight.

Daemen will still hold the record for youngest person to fly in space after Tuesday\u2019s launch, but Shatner will eclipse Funk\u2019s record by eight years and John Glenn\u2019s mark before that by 13.

\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to the whole thing,\u201d Shatner told CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper. \u201cImagine being weightless and staring into the blackness and seeing the Earth, that\u2019s what I want to absorb.\u201d

But he added, smiling: \u201cThings like that go up and boom in the night. It\u2019s a little scary, I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
File photo of a New Shepard launch in 2019. Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blue Origin\u2019s medical requirements for passengers are relatively relaxed given the spacecraft is fully automated.

The most difficult challenges for 90-year-old Shatner likely will be climbing the seven flights of stairs required to reach the gangway to board the New Shepard capsule and then enduring more than five times the normal force of gravity during descent.

But Funk had no problems, and Blue Origin officials presumably expect the same for Shatner.

The mission marks the sixth piloted commercial, non-government sub-orbital spaceflight in a high-stakes competition between Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, owned by fellow billionaire Richard Branson.

Virgin has launched four piloted flights of its winged spaceplane VSS Unity, most recently sending up Branson, two pilots and three company crewmates on July 11. At least one more flight is planned this year, with three researchers on board representing the Italian air force, before commercial passenger flights begin next year.

Blue Origin followed up the Bezos flight by launching a suite of NASA experiments on an unpiloted mission Aug. 26. The flight Wednesday will be the company\u2019s 18th overall and the second with passengers aboard.

Virgin Galactic is charging about $500,000 per seat. Blue Origin has not announced pricing for the New Shepard or how much Boshuizen and de Vries might have paid.

Shatner is flying as a guest of Blue Origin while Powers, a lawyer, a former NASA space station flight controller and Blue Origin\u2019s vice president for missions and flight operations, is flying as a company representative.

CBS News recently reported allegations of safety issues from current and former Blue Origin employees, most speaking anonymously, including complaints about a \u201ctoxic\u201d corporate culture. But Powers told King \u201cthat just hasn\u2019t been my experience at Blue.\u201d

\u201cWe\u2019re exceedingly thorough,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve worked on New Shepherd for eight years now in a variety of roles, and I can\u2019t say enough about the team of professionals that work on this program. \u2026 Safety has always been our top priority. That has always been my experience here.\u201d

Asked what she wanted to do most on the flight, Powers said in a Blue Origin video posted to Twitter \u201cI plan to spend the majority of the time looking out the window.\u201d Shatner agreed, saying \u201cI plan to be looking out the window with my nose pressed against the (glass). The only thing I don\u2019t want to see is a little gremlin looking back at me!\u201d

He was referring to a now-classic episode of \u201cThe Twilight Zone\u201d titled \u201cNightmare at 20,000 feet\u201d in which Shatner, playing the part of an airline passenger, sees a gremlin on the plane\u2019s wing. His frantic efforts to convince his wife and fellow passengers the gremlin is real instead convinces them he\u2019s suffered a breakdown.<\/p>\n

\"\"
This diagram illustrates the flight profile for a typical New Shepard launch and landing. Credit: Blue Origin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

James T. Kirk is Shatner\u2019s most famous role and in the Blue Origin video, Powers was asked how excited she was to fly with the legendary starship captain.

\u201cI don\u2019t know if I\u2019m more excited to be going to space with Denny Crane or with Captain Kirk,\u201d she said, referring to Shatner\u2019s portrayal of a lawyer in the TV series \u201cBoston Legal.\u201d

\u201cBut Denny Crane was on the verge of senility,\u201d Shatner joked.

\u201cThat\u2019s right!\u201d Powers laughed. \u201cWe probably want the Captain Kirk version.\u201d

\u201cI think you\u2019re better off with that guy,\u201d Shatner replied.

Star Trek debuted in 1966 when NASA was still launching two-man Gemini spacecraft. The series was canceled after three seasons, but devoted fans turned it into a cult classic. NASA named its prototype space shuttle \u201cEnterprise,\u201d spin-off series were launched and Shatner starred in seven of the 13 feature-length Star Trek movies released to date.

While filming the original Star Trek for television, Shatner told Cooper, it was just dawning on people that astronauts would soon be flying to the moon.

\u201cI would go down to Cape Kennedy from time to time during the series and I met all the astronauts and I was very impressed,\u201d Shatner said. \u201cWhen they went to the moon, I had reached (my) nadir, they were at the apogee. I was divorced, the show was canceled and I\u2019m looking up there \u2026 and I\u2019m lying in a cab trying to get some sleep because I have to perform the next day and I can\u2019t afford a hotel room.

\u201cSo 55 years later, I wrote a song for this album that\u2019s out there now called \u2018Bill,\u2019 and one of the songs is \u2018So Far From the Moon.\u201d It was all about that moment when I was looking at the sky, being so far from the moon, and here I am all this time later being a few thousand feet closer to the moon than you are.\u201d

As might be expected, Shatner is the \u201cstar\u201d of New Shepard flight 18, and that\u2019s presumably just fine with crewmates Boshuizen and de Vries. Despite their professional and financial success, neither man has an entry in Wikipedia and both seem content to keep personal details personal.

Boshuizen, 44, is an Australian who holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Sydney. After a stint at NASA\u2019s Ames Research Center in California, he co-founded Planet Labs, a company that pioneered the use of small \u201cnanosats\u201d and now operates the largest fleet of commercial Earth-observation satellites.

He also is a partner at DCVC, a \u201cdeep tech\u201d investment company in San Francisco, and is a musician in his spare time, performing under the name \u201cDr. Chrispy.\u201d

\u201cI\u2019m very excited,\u201d he told King. \u201cI\u2019ve waited my entire life to do this. I think it\u2019s pretty amazing that 2021 is the year that really the human race is finally starting to go to space at scale.

\u201cI think we\u2019ll look back at this date 50 years from now and go, wow, this really was a special time in history, just like the Wright brothers, when people started flying passenger planes. It\u2019s really exciting to be part of history and I can\u2019t wait to fly.\u201d

De Vries, a private pilot in his spare time, was trained as a molecular biologist and co-founded Medidata Solutions, the most-used clinical research platform in the world. The company\u2019s software has managed more than 25,000 clinical trials involving more than seven million patients. Dassault Syst\u00e8mes acquired the company in 1999 for $5.8 billion.

\u201cI am actually looking forward to seeing the Earth from a different perspective than I ever had before,\u201d he said in the CBS Mornings crew interview. \u201cI just can\u2019t wait to stare out that window and feel differently about humanity and our planet than I\u2019ve ever had the opportunity to before.\u201d

COMPETING APPROACHES TO SUB-ORBITAL SPACEFLIGHT<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The competition between Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic showcases the emerging commercial space marketplace.

Branson won the commercial sub-orbital space race in 2018 when his company launched its first piloted test flight above 50 miles, the boundary of space recognized by NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration.

While Branson\u2019s July 11 sub-orbital hop was Virgin\u2019s fourth carrying pilots, it was the first with a full six-person crew and the first with the company owner on board.

Branson announced his flight after Bezos had already selected his July 20 launch date, upstaging the Amazon founder and grabbing headlines in the battle to sell a product \u2014 spaceflight \u2014 as a for-profit enterprise.

\u201cI truly believe that space belongs to all of us,\u201d Branson said before his flight. \u201cAfter more than 16 years of research, engineering and testing, Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good.\u201d

He said he was \u201chonored to help validate the journey our future astronauts will undertake and ensure we deliver the unique customer experience people expect from Virgin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
The rocket motor on Virgin Galactic\u2019s VSS Unity rocket plane fires during a July 11 climb to space with Richard Branson and other company employees. Credit: Virgin Galactic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unlike Virgin\u2019s VSS Unity spaceplane, which is launched from a carrier jet and glides to a runway landing after a brief visit to the lower edge of space, Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard is a much more traditional rocket and capsule.

In a little more than two minutes, the single-stage booster propels the capsule and its crew straight up to an altitude of about 32 miles and a velocity of some 2,200 mph before main engine shutdown.

Less than 30 seconds later, at an altitude of about 45 miles, the crew capsule is released to fly on its own.

While the reusable booster heads back to landing on a nearby pad, the crew capsule continues upward on an unpowered, ballistic trajectory, reaching a maximum altitude of just above 62 miles three-and-a-half minutes after takeoff.

The F\u00e9d\u00e9ration A\u00e9ronautique Internationale (FAI), an international body based in Switzerland that certifies aerospace records, considers an altitude of 100 kilometers, or 62 miles, as the dividing line between the discernible atmosphere and space.

Approaching the top of the trajectory, Shatner and his crewmates will experience about three minutes of weightlessness, enough time to unstrap and float about the cabin while enjoying spectacular views of Earth through six windows more than a three feet tall and nearly two-and-a-half feet wide.

Plunging back into the lower atmosphere, the capsule will rapidly decelerate, subjecting the passengers to more than five times the normal force of gravity, before three large parachutes unfurl, lowering the craft to a gentle touchdown a few miles from the launch pad.

From liftoff to landing: about 10 minutes. Virgin passengers enjoy a longer flight, about 90 minutes from carrier jet takeoff to spaceplane landing, but the time spent \u201cin space\u201d is roughly the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Space industry entrepreneur Chris Boshuizen, actor William Shatner, Blue Origin vice president Audrey Powers, and businessman Glen de Vries pose in their flight suits ahead of their launch on a suborbital flight to the edge of space. Credit: Blue Origin Fifty-five years after his debut as Captain Kirk […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}