“To boldly go where no man has gone before,” or so the famous Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame said in the beginning of every episode of the television series that aired between 1966 and 1969. For years the character played by actor William Shatner has inspired millions of fans worldwide on his adventures through space, which the show affectionately refers to as the “final frontier.”
And now, more than 50 years after the first fateful episode of Star Trek aired, Shatner finally gets his shot at fulfilling his onscreen destiny—with the help of Blue Origin’s 18th New Shepard flight, coining the NS-18 mission. The mission also makes the 90-year-old Shatner the oldest person to ever go to space, beating the 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk from Blue Origin’s historic July 20 flight.
Shatner was joined by three other passengers on NS-18, including Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations. With the two were two paying private passengers: Glen de Vries, vice chairperson for life sciences and healthcare at Dassault Systèmes, a French software company; and Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of Planet Labs, a private Earth-imaging company based in San Francisco, California.
The crew lifted off from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One, located in Van Horn, Texas, at 9:50 a.m. local time. Shatner and crew experienced some 4 minutes of weightlessness during the 11-minute total flight time, after which the capsule containing all passengers landed back safely close to Blue Origin’s facility there. The flight also makes Boshuizen the first Australian to ever head to space.
Shatner said that it was “the most profound experience [he] could ever imagine” when interviewed after landing by Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos. “Everybody in the world needs to see it.”
References
- Blue Origin successfully and safely completes second human flight to space and back. (n.d.). Blue Origin. Retrieved October 14, 2021, from https://www.blueorigin.com/news/new-shepard-ns-18-mission-updates
- Roulette, J. (2021, October 13). In a Blue Origin Rocket, William Shatner Finally Goes to Space. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/science/william-shatner-space-blue-origin.html
- Weitering, H. (2021, October 13). Blue Origin launches William Shatner and crew of 3 to the final frontier and back. Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/william-shatner-launches-on-blue-origin
