Star Trek meets star reality as William Shatner, the iconic 90-year-old actor, will fly on the next Blue Origins suborbital launch on October 12th.
The famous actor, who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk in the short-lived but much-loved original 1966 Star Trek series, will become the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing the record set by 82-year-old Wally Funk, who flew with Blue Origins in their first tourism flight last summer.
Shatner will boldly go where many people have gone before, spending about 11 minutes total in flight, with a brief excursion above the Karman Line, the internationally-recognized “boundary” of space. This will be the second launch of Blue Origins’ burgeoning space tourism business.
Shatner will be joined on the New Shepard rocket by Audrey Powers (no relation to Austin), the vice president of mission and flight operations for Blue Origins, along with Chris Boshuizen, an Australian former NASA engineer, and Glen de Vries, the founder of clinical research platform Medidata Solutions.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” Shatner said in the space company’s press release. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.”
Blue Origins remains tight-lipped about how much the tourists paid for their spots, but the company did auction off a ticket last year for $28 million.
At least it’s cheaper than the Enterprise.
