On Monday, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin announced that Star Trek star, William Shatner, will travel to space on the next Blue Origin flight. Shatner, who is 90-years-old, will be joined by Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations, as well as crewmates Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries. The flight will depart from Launch Site One on October 12.
“William Shatner’s career as an actor, director, producer, writer, recording artist, and horseman has spanned 60 years,” Blue Origin announced in a press release. “He originated the role of ‘Captain James T. Kirk’ in 1966 for the television series Star Trek. The series spawned a feature film franchise where Shatner returned as Captain Kirk in seven of the Star Trek movies, one of which he directed. He has long wanted to travel to space and will become the oldest person to have flown to space.”
“Shatner is currently the host and executive producer of The UnXplained on The History Channel. From the producers of Ancient Aliens and The Curse of Oak Island, the one-hour, non-fiction series explores the world’s most fascinating, strange and inexplicable mysteries,” the press release continued.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now. I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle,” said Shatner.
“So now I can say something. Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’” Shatner tweeted following the announcement.
So now I can say something. Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a “rocket man!” 😝🤣 https://t.co/B2jFeXrr6L
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 4, 2021
“I’m so proud and humbled to fly on behalf of Team Blue, and I’m excited to continue writing Blue’s human spaceflight history,” said Audrey Powers, who joined Blue Origin in 2013, and now “oversees all New Shepard flight operations, vehicle maintenance, and launch, landing, and ground support infrastructure.”
“I was part of the amazing effort we assembled for New Shepard’s Human Flight Certification Review, a years-long initiative completed in July 2021. As an engineer and lawyer with more than two decades of experience in the aerospace industry, I have great confidence in our New Shepard team and the vehicle we’ve developed,” she added.
In July, Bezos flew into space “on his company’s first flight with passengers aboard, becoming the second billionaire to use his own spacecraft to become an astronaut.”
As The Daily Wire reported at the time, “The 10:10 flight went off without a hitch, blasting off right on schedule, soaring to an apogee of 351,210 feet (66.51 miles), then plunging back to Earth.”
In a status check of all passengers after the capsule landed in a plume of dust, the Amazon founder said “astronaut Bezos: best day ever.”
“It’s dark up here!” said Wally Funk, one of 13 female pilots who passed the same tests as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never got a chance to go to space. On the way back to Earth, she exclaimed: “2,000 miles per hour! Oh my word!”
Bezos was accompanied into space by three people: his brother, Mark, an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas, and an 18-year-old physics student from the Netherlands — the oldest and youngest people ever to blast into space.