Iconic Actor Boldly Goes Where He Had Never Gone Before
In the 1960s, through the magic of television and later through Hollywood movies, William Shatner explored “space, the final frontier.”
Years later, at the age of 90, Shatner incredibly did the unthinkable by making his first real trip into space.
On Wednesday, the iconic actor, who was best known for his iconic role as James T. Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise in Star Trek, took a memorable ride aboard a suborbital spacecraft that CNN reported “graced the edge of outer space” before parachuting to a landing. Shatner became the oldest person ever to travel into space.
Although the flight lasted only 10 minutes—unlike any space trip he ever made on television and in the movies—it was a trip Shatner will never forget. Just before landing, the famed pioneer of fictional space could be heard saying on the flight’s livestream, “That was unlike anything they described. … that’s unlike everything you’ll ever see again.”
The flight was made on a Blue Origin New Shephard rocket that lifted off from the company’s west Texas launch site at 10:50 a.m. ET. It wasn’t a solo flight—Shatner was joined by former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen; Glen de Vries, an entrepreneur and executive with French software company Dassault Systemes; and Blue Origin’s president of mission and flight operations Audrey Powers.
CNET.com reported that, a few minutes into the flight, the capsule “separated from the booster and continued on to suborbital space, where the crew experienced weightlessness and an epic view of Earth before reentering the atmosphere for a parachute-assisted soft landing in the desert.”
During the flight, Shatner posted on Twitter a quote from Sir Isaac Newton:
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, diverting myself in now & then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. pic.twitter.com/ZY2Ka8ij7z
— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) October 13, 2021
Watch the video above to get a glimpse of Shatner’s experience. Liftoff occurs at around 2:33:31. {eoa}
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