A Teary-eyed William Shatner Describes Flying to Space for Real Aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
Visibly moved to tears, Star Trek actor William Shatner struggled to describe the experience of spaceflight to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos after making a suborbital flight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard capsule.
“What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I am so filled with emotion about what just happened. Just extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now, I don’t wanna lose it,” he said.
Shatner, who is known the world over as Captain James Tiberius Kirk from the Star Trek TV series and movies, became the oldest space explorer at the age of 90. He enjoyed about 3 minutes of weightlessness during the 10-minute flight.
Other passengers on the flight included: Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of Planet Labs; Glen de Vries, vice-chairman of Licenses & Healthcare, Dassault Systemes and co-founder of Mediadata; and Audrey Powers, Blue Origin vice president of Mission and Flight Operations.
Shatner was particularly struck by the contrast of the Blue Earth below him and the dark black of space.
“Suddenly you’re thru the blue to black….The moment you see the vulnerability of everything…This air that’s keeping us alive is a sliver,” he said.
It was the second crewed New Shepard flight and the 18th overall for the reusable rocket and capsule system. Jeff Bezos flew on the first crewed flight with his brother Mark and two other people on July 20, which was the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
“At Blue Origin, we are motivated by the dreamers that inspire us and the builders who turn those dreams into reality. Today’s crew represented both dreamers and builders. We had the honor of flying our very own Audrey Powers, Vice President of New Shepard Operations, who fulfilled a lifelong dream to go to space and has been an integral part of building New Shepard. Our two customers, Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries, have built their own successful ventures and have now realized their own dreams of space travel. And, as everyone knows, William Shatner has played an important role in describing and imagining the wonders of universe and inspired many of us to pursue a career in the space industry,” said Bob Smith, CEO Blue Origin. “This flight was another step forward in flying astronauts safely and often. It’s an incredible team and we are just getting started.”
Blue Origin is planning a third crewed flight this year, with additional crewed flights planned for 2022.
Shatner said he wanted everyone to be able to experience the wonders of space as he did. That will prove difficult for the foreseeable future. Blue Origin has not announced what its tickets cost. Rival suborbital provider Virgin Galactic is charging $450,000 per seat to new customers. (The company previously sold tickets for $200,000 or $250,000, depending upon when they were bought.) Tickets to orbit on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Roscosmos’ Soyuz spacecraft cost tens of millions of dollars.
31 responses to “A Teary-eyed William Shatner Describes Flying to Space for Real Aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard”
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Outstanding! I’ve said it before, human society is in for a long term onslaught of changes as their universe of shared experience and capabilities expands dramatically. Our great great grand kids will look at us as amazingly pedestrian and short sighted.
Hello Andrew. Move to Seattle going along well everything done except finding a place for the airplane 🙂 (s)
I think the line was in 2001 that “humans had finally found something as exciting as war, but not everyone realized that”
I think that future generations will one way or the other look back on today’s times as a turning point. either back into the darkness of fascism or a notion of one of those stellar times when a great country flirted but turned away from it
and that may be a spark for the notion of tribalism to start dying (or be reinforced) but if its dying…its going to take a long long time for its embers to go out
the essence of spaceflight true spaceflight is some hope that we are all “human” and that means a rebuke of tribalism in terms of how we view each other. otherwise the talent pool is simply not there to get us into space
one reason we are advancing literally into space and going nowhere is that the talent pool is to small. to their credit Bezos, Musk and Bransom all have demonstrated the talent pool that can do this kind of work, is not limited to NASA and its contractors
fly safe RGO
I wonder, and worry, that that the exit from tribalism has been a 200 year process sparked and maintained by the formation of the USA. I’m an escaped Italian, and take my identity as a general purpose American. The successes and failures of Italy mean nothing to me. I’m flat to the place. I’m much more engaged with the history and future of the USA. People can escape their tribe. There are many geopolitical forces pushing forward a anti-tribal trajectory. The USA, EU, NATO, AUKUS, are all good examples with real power behind them. But you also have China and Russia who actively push a tribal and ethnic worldview. Let’s see how they deal with the onslaught of space. I think Space will push forward US, UK, and EU style trans-tribalism/exo-ethnicity politics. But maybe not. We’re about to find out.
It depends heavily on who settles the first communities in space. It’s why getting Starship moving forward is critical. Elon Musk goofed on selecting Boca Chica, and here is hoping he recovers from the era. Or folks stop trying to turn a smelly coastal swamp, no different from hundreds along the Gulf, into some environmental icon.
Anyone who underestimates how environmental politics can undermine a project need only look at Andy Beal’s misadventure at Sombrero Island. I don’t think it’s the rocket that’s the real issue, it’s the water plant. That’s a engineering and regulatory hurdle.
Musk has tried to cheat the environmental aspects of it. thats typical him
I’ll ignore the environmental notion. our prime vacation home is on Matagorda beach. we are big environmentalist Al Gore smiles on us a lot
it doesnt depend on the first community becuase that likely will fail. it depends on the first economic reason to be in space.
Put it another way. California and the rest of the left coast is why the nation moved west. not the fly over states
I think you’re overlooking the Great Lakes, and Mississippi river.
the states stopped paying for themselves by the time we went passed Kansas. and didnt start again until we got to the left coast
I may be biased here, but I think Arizona must have been pretty profitable early on. And I’d imagine the Mormons are such an enterprising lot, that they’d have come in early too. Colorado must have been fairly early, they got a US Mint pretty early on.
In Arizona and Colorado it was big gold strikes at Prescott and Denver that put them on the map. With the Mormons it was the acceptance of polygamy and the banning of alcohol that got them going. With a cabin full of wives and kids, and no saloons to retreat to, the guys were looking for any excuse to get outside and do something…anything.
HA. Anything indeed.
Yes, Utah was very profitable long before those in the East even heard of California and went there looking for gold.
New Mexico was paying for itself before there even was an United States. And Texas did pretty well feeding beef to all those factory workers in the east. And most of the early mining and fur trade was in the Rockies and Nevada.
Boca Chica is not as nice as Matagorda Beach. That was why the houses there cost so much less. The beach at Boca Chica hasn’t been developed since the hurricane in the 1930’s wiped out the prohibition era resort. Hardly anyone would go to Boca Chica because of the danger from its proximity to the border before SpaceX put it on the map.
we are escaped Germans (some Irish but mostly Germans) and I never really look at the homeland. I do remember a phrase that came up while talking to my grandfather and his brothers about WW2…they were bomber pilots and my Grandfather wondered when he got transfered to the European theater after Pearl Harbor if “I could commit mass murder on Germans”. his mother was first generation American…but “The General” had no problems. 26 bombing missions. Oddly enough where he balked, but it didnt seem to hurt his career as such…was the fire bombings over Tokyo.
I dont think space alone is good enough to end tribalism, but I suspect that if we ever find something in space that pays the freight for humans to be there…whatever that is will be so much of a game changer in terms of the eocnomy that …
it will bring into play the worst and best of us. “for all mankind” is either broad or narrow depending on your definition of mankind. go ask any trumper…its very narrow no brown people
I’d argue “For all mankind” is a raging success. Probably the most successful political idea of the 20th cen. When I talk with internationals all the time and they speak of when ‘We’ went to the Moon, when “WE” went to Jupiter, or they ask about how many asteroids have “WE” surveyed? I take extra special joy when they have so adopted American space exploration as their own exploration and genuinely feel being a part of it. Look at the NASA T shirt fashion trend the world over. That’s a huge real word, right now, win.
an interesting take
He’s an actor…. Just an actor doing a commercial. Could just as easily be laughing or be angry in the next 10s.
Certainly, actors never have genuine emotions. Much like trolls. They also never step out of character, shop for groceries at Ralph’s or drive themselves to work.
https://media0.giphy.com/me…
Wonder how long before the space tourism bashers attack this flight.
About four hours ago in this thread. Days ago in other forums. Haters gotta hate.
everyone should watch free enterprise at least once a month
They are already are and have been.
I find most interesting those who rant that Bill (or anyone else) shoulda / coulda / woulda gone all the way to orbit with SpaceX instead.
And I’m obliged to remind them that there’s an approximate two decimal place price difference between orbital with SpaceX (or the Russians) and suborbital with Blue or Virgin.
This is why small, closer, amusement parks (yes, it’s a ‘joyride,’ so is orbital, so flipping what?) still exist, despite Disney or Six Flags. Like most other things, you go with what you can afford.
(And in specific cases like William Shatner who has long acknowledged a fear of *any* flying, you may *want* the shorter, guaranteed to return, no possible de-orbit/meaningful re-entry issues flight instead. It just may be all that you think you can take.)
I am happy for Bill. he has brought a lot of joy to a lot of people …
having said that it wont change space tourism at all. which I am starting to think in terms of low earth orbit is another dead end industry
GO BILL FREE ENTERPRISE
Yep, a huge detour that is courtesy of the Ansari X-Prize. There are specific conditions in the economic and technology environments that are necessary for prizes to be effect. None were satisfied by the Ansari X-Prize which is why it was such an expensive detour to the industry into a dead end street.
it wont be the first time nor the laast that I am wrong about some emerging market…but I’ll be very surprised if there is a significant space tourism market pure tourism in the next 10 years…of any kind
the best analysis that anyone can come up with is that from ignition to splashdown the I4 folks were spending (or someone was) 1/4 million dollars an hour to be in space.
I doubt Bezos has many paying passengers, he is desperate to prime the pump with enormous publicity but cannot seem to get it going
its unclear that there is a price point that will make even suborbital tourism work much less orbital tourism
to get to that space fans invent Musk creating a B777 (or two or three times) the price cost of that…but 1) its not clear he can and 2) its not clear that people would go to space “just at that price point”
Space enthsiast are trapped in the notion that space is a place that people just want to go to and hang out in and are willing to pay a LOT of money to do that
and there is next to no data to support that
it is very likely that the I4 crew will have a chilling affect on space tourism…I bet that they were bored stiff
Yes, space by itself is not an interesting enough destination beyond the view. You need things for the tourists to do, but the cost has to be low enough to make it worth it.
Bragging rights will disappear after the first dozen or so, and unlike climbing Mt Everest, their is no personal physical challenge to test your strength.
So until it’s as cheap as a European vacation, with lots of things to see and do, it’s numbers will be small, probably too small for any economies of scale.
it strikes me that what you are saying is that space tourism is a bust. if so and you did not come out and say that…then I agree
I dont know about most people…but I dont go on vacations and simply look out the window. I want to do things and do different things and I dont see that really happening in space for humans anytime soon.
everytime I look around what “I” see are people on earth preparing to do things in space and all of them are developing machines to do that.
we will have “something” when either Axiom or SNC or whoever builds a facility and sells space on it to “some group” who wants to send “someone” to do some experiment or produce something on a space station…Lets say that Musk is flying people to orbit and back for 20 million a person if you have 4.
then its another oh say 5 million a day to stay there so we are talking you have to do something that works up to being worth 70 million for 10 days
there might be something, but I have no clue what it is
I will be curious to see in say 5 years what Starship’s cost to orbit or
my prediction right now…is that its about 100 million a launch