Billionaire US businessman Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin has taken off for its second suborbital tourism flight, with actor William Shatner — who embodied the promise of space travel on the Star Trek”TV series and films — among the four-person all-civilian crew that blasted off in Texas.
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The launch had originally been scheduled for Wednesday, but was delayed for “wind-related reasons”
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On board was former Star Trek star William Shatner, who played Captain James T Kirk in the series
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Blue Origin is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Galactic Holdings Inc to corner the space tourism market
The launch had originally been scheduled for Wednesday, but was delayed for “wind-related reasons” until early on Thursday.
Shatner played Captain James T Kirk on Star Trek and at 90 years old is now the oldest person ever in space.
Blue Origin is competing against Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Galactic Holdings Inc to corner the space tourism market
Shatner and his crew mates took off at about 1:45 AM aboard the 18.3 metre-tall fully autonomous New Shepard spacecraft at Blue Origin’s launch site about 32 km outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn.
Joining Shatner for what was roughly a 10-minute journey were former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, clinical research entrepreneur Glen de Vries and Blue Origin vice-president and engineer Audrey Powers.
New Shepard carried the passengers more than 96km above Earth, allowing them to experience a few minutes of weightlessness before the crew capsule returned to the Texas desert under parachutes.
Blue Origin spokesperson Ariane Cornell said the New Shepard has flown 17 consecutive successful missions before.
The four crew members went through training on Wednesday and the mission team completed a flight-readiness evaluation to ensure “all systems are go for launch,” Blue Origin said on Twitter.
Blue Origin had a successful debut space tourism flight on July 20, with Mr Bezos and three others aboard, flying to the edge of space and back on a trip lasting 10 minutes and 10 seconds.
On that flight, pioneering female aviator Wally Funk at age 82 became the oldest person to reach space.
Mr Bezos, the Amazon.com Inc founder and current executive chairman, formed Blue Origin two decades ago.
Shatner, who turned 90 in March, has been acting since the 1950s and remains busy with entertainment projects and fan conventions.
Shatner finally makes it to the final frontier
Shatner’s character captained the starship Enterprise on the classic 1960s TV series and seven subsequent films about fictional adventures in outer space.
As an actor, Shatner was synonymous with space voyages.
Shatner said there is both irony and symmetry to his space trip, having played a space explorer for decades and now actually becoming one.
“This is no piece of cake,” Shatner told the program “CBS Mornings.”
Reuters