William Shatner and three others launch 62 miles above Earth on Blue Origin’s New Shepard

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Blue Origin boss Jeff Bezos welcomed home four new astronauts on Wednesday morning, with one earning the title of oldest person ever to go to space.

William Shatner, 90,  Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries and Audrey Powers stepped out of the iconic white capsule following their first mission to the final frontier, where they spent three minutes in zero-gravity. 

The crew launched aboard Blue Origin’s 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket from the company’s Launch Site One in Van Horn, Texas just after 10:45am ET.

‘Ladies and gentleman it is time to launch this rocket. Godspeed New Shepard,’ Blue Origin launch commentator Jacki Cortese said at lift off.

The four members soared  more than 350,000 feet above Earth’s surface within a little over three minutes of the rocket launching.

‘Welcome to space,’ Cortese said from the ground.

The livestream showed the white capsule hanging in the darkness of space, while the four members float in zero-gravity for three minutes.  

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The capsule then begun its journey back to Earth, with three parachutes deploying to guide the craft for a soft landing in the Texas desert.

A microphone inside the capsule picked up the excitement from the crew inside.

‘This is like nothing I have experienced before,’ Shatner said during the descent. 

All wearing blue flight suits with the company’s name in white letters on one sleeve, the team climbed into white capsule with about an hour left on the countdown, 

The team received a send off from Blue Origin boss Jeff Bezos who also drove them to the launch tower and closed the hatch with just minutes left before launch. 

The crew is strapped in their seats as they wait for countdown clock to run out and once it does, it will only take three minutes for NS18 to hit the 62-mile mark- passing the ‘Karman line’ that is the edge of space- after New Shepard leaves the launch pad. 

All four members received a special challenge coin shortly after arriving at the training center, which represents belonging and the achievement of something great and is only awarded to astronauts who passed training and are set to fly on a spacecraft. 

The team climbed the tower about 30 minutes before launch and each rung a hanging silver bell before walking through a tunnel on the way to the launch capsule, which says above it ‘light this candle.’  

This is the second crewed flight conducted by the Jeff Bezos-owned company – the first took off on July 20 and Bezos himself was along for the ride.

However, Wednesday’s mission gained just as much attention as Shatner, who is famed for playing Captain James T. Kirk in the hit show ‘Star Trek,’ made a dream come true for millions who were inspired by the sci-fi television show. 

‘This is a pinch-me moment for all of us to see Captain James Tiberius Kirk go to space,’ Cortese said before liftoff. She said she, like so many others, was drawn to the space business by shows like ‘Star Trek.’ 

As an actor, Shatner was synonymous with space voyages. During the opening credits of each episode of the series, he called space ‘the final frontier’ and promised ‘to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.’

Shatner said there is both irony and symmetry to his space trip, having played a space explorer for decades and now actually becoming one.

‘Having played the role of Captain Kirk everybody assigns the knowledge that a futuristic astronaut would have, but I’ve always been consumed with curiosity and it is the adventure I feel so good doing,’ Shatner said in a video shared by Blue Origin Tuesday.   

Shatner, also known for his role as lawyer Denny Crane in ‘Boston Legal,’ among many others, has spoken in the past about an at-times difficult relationship with Star Trek and its fan culture.

But in recent years, the actor has leaned into the fame brought about by his most famous role.

‘It looks like there’s a great deal of curiosity in this fictional character, Captain Kirk,’ he said in a video released by Blue Origin.

Shatner’s participation in the flight has helped generate publicity for Blue Origin as it competes against two billionaire-backed rivals – Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic- to attract customers willing to pay large sums to experience spaceflight.  

The three other individuals strapped inside the capsule also have a strong connection with space. 

Powers, who is Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations, has spent years watching missions soar into space and can now check a spaceflight off her bucket list. 

‘I think I reached a certain age when I had given up on the idea that I would go to space,’ she said in a video clip.

‘In my role in mission flight operations, we were waiting to hear who the fourth astronaut was.’

Powers received a phone call from Michael Edmonds, a colleague, and told her: ‘On behalf of Jeff and the senior leadership we’d like you to represent team Blue and fly as the fourth astronaut.’

Blue Origin has not confirmed if Powers and Shatner paid for a seat, or the experience was gifted, but it is sure the other two passengers did.

Boshuizen, who has an estimated net worth approaching $30 million, was also the Space Mission Architect at NASA’s Ames Research Center between 2008 and 2012.

During this time he invented the Phonesat, which is a satellite built from a smartphone.

‘I’ve worked in space industry my entire life and I am excited the door is finally opening,’ Boshuizen said during a recent interview with Good Morning America (GMA). 

‘I think we will look back at this day 50 years from now and go this was the year the human race started going to space.’

de Vries, co-founder of Medidata, said the spot on the New Shepard is a ‘dream come true.’

‘This is how innovation happens,’ he told GMA’s host TJ Holmes.

‘I lived in it healthcare and life sciences when you think about an industry being created and the opportunity for us to fuel that industry, as Chris was saying this is the beginning of a new time for space.

‘We are on the beginning of a curve that is just going to blast off.’ 

Boshuizen and Vries will bring the company’s total number of paying customers to three, after Dutch teen Oliver Daemen became the first during the first flight on July 20. 

Bezos is sending several pieces of Star Trek artwork and ‘home-made toys’, that he created when he was nine, into space with actor William Shatner on the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket.

Bezos took to Instagram to announce the paper toys would be going up on the next rocket launch, adding he ‘made these tricorders and communicator to play Star Trek with my friends.’

His mother saved them for 48 years and dug them out a week before the launch, prompting Bezos to ask Shatner to take them with him into space, adding ‘please don’t judge me for the artwork. Thank you, Bill!’

One Tuesday, lead flight director, Nick Patrick, said that the crew completed their first day of training on Sunday. They also spent yesterday doing launch training.

‘The training itself was designed to do three things for our astronauts,’ Patrick said during a video interview.

‘The first thing is it’s designed to train them on the safety systems that we have onboard the crew capsule and the expected responses from the crew if we were to have an emergency.’

The second is to prepare the crew for the unexpected aspects of spaceflight such as strange noises, bumps and accelerations, Patrick explained. 

The third part of training teaches the crew how to behave in zero-gravity inside the cabin without colliding with their flight mates, he continued.

‘I am very confident that we will learn tomorrow that this training has gone well for these four astronauts and we will be ready to launch them,’ said Patrick.

The four individuals are scheduled to pile inside a truck to the launch tower 45 minutes before lift-off. 

This is the same path Bezos, his brother Mark They will blast off from a base in the west Texas town of Van Horn on a journey to the edge of space.

‘I’m going to see the vastness of space and the extraordinary miracle of our Earth and how fragile it is compared to the forces at work in the universe,’ Shatner told NBC’s ‘Today’ program.

Shatner shot to fame when he took on the role of James T Kirk in the original Star Trek series in 1966.

This was four years after Alan Shephard – who the rocket he’ll travel in is named after – became the first American in space, and three years before Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon.

‘I plan to be looking out the window with my nose pressed against the window. The only thing I don’t want to see is a little gremlin looking back at me,’ Shatner said referring to his role on Twilight Zone’s ‘Nightmare at 20,000 feet.’