DENNY CRANE IN SPACE
Beam me up, Jeff! William Shatner lends Blue Origin star power
Issued on: 09/10/2021 -
Washington (AFP)
When Star Trek first aired in 1966, America was still three years away from putting people on the Moon and the idea that people could one day live and work in space seemed like a fantasy.
On October 12, William Shatner -- Captain James T. Kirk to Trekkies -- is set to become the first member of the iconic show's cast to journey to the final frontier, as a guest aboard a Blue Origin suborbital rocket.
For fans, the 10-minute hop from a West Texas base back to Earth will be a fitting coda for a pop culture phenomenon that inspired generations of astronauts.
"I plan to be looking out the window with my nose pressed against the window, the only thing that I don't want to see is a little gremlin looking back at me," the 90-year-old Canadian, who will become the oldest person ever to go to space, joked in a video release.
Blue Origin's decision to invite one of the most recognizable galaxy-faring characters from science fiction for its second crewed flight has helped maintain excitement around the nascent space tourism sector, as the novelty starts to wear off.
This summer saw flamboyant British entrepreneur Richard Branson fly just beyond the atmosphere in a Virgin Galactic vessel on July 9, beating the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos by a few days in their battle of the billionaire space barons.
Elon Musk's SpaceX sent four private astronauts to orbit the Earth for three days as part of the Inspiration4 mission in September, which raised more than $200 million for charity.
"Bringing on a celebrity like William Shatner, who's related to space, brings a kind of renewed novelty, and creates media and cultural attention," Joe Czabovsky, an expert in public relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told AFP.
- Pioneering show -
The original Star Trek was canceled after only three seasons, but went on to spawn more than a dozen movies and several spin-off series, including some that are ongoing.
Shatner, as the plucky and decisive Kirk, commanded the USS Enterprise on a five-year-mission "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."
His actual voyage to space will be far shorter, taking the crew just beyond the Karman line, 62 miles (100 kilometers) high, where they will experience four minutes of weightlessness and gaze out at the curvature of the planet.
He will be joined by Audrey Powers, Blue Origin's vice president of mission and flight operations, Planet Labs co-founder Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries, a co-founder of clinical research platform Medidata Solutions.
Star Trek turned American attention to the stars as the US space program was in its offing, landing a man on the Moon towards the end of its run in 1969.
It broke ground by tackling complicated moral questions, and was notable for its diverse cast at a time when the country was struggling through the Civil Rights era.
The Enterprise crew included an Asian-American helmsman, a half-human half-Vulcan science officer, and a Russian-born ensign.
Shatner made history in 1968 when he kissed Black co-star Nichelle Nichols, who played Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, in the first interracial kiss on American television.
- Influential -
The show is also closely intertwined with the US space program.
In 1976 the first Space Shuttle was named "Enterprise" following a letter writing campaign by fans that swayed then-president Gerald Ford.
NASA hired Nichols in the 1970s to help recruit new astronauts, and numerous other cast members have voiced official documentaries or given talks for the agency.
Astronauts have returned the favor, posing in Star Trek uniforms for mission-related posters and embracing the show's motifs.
"For 50 years, Star Trek has inspired generations of scientists, engineers, and even astronauts," NASA astronaut Victor Glover said in a 2016 video that drew parallels between research on the Enterprise and the scientific instruments on the ISS today.
Another mega-fan: Bezos himself.
Amazon's Alexa was said to be inspired by the conversational computer in Star Trek, and Bezos -- wearing heavy makeup sporting an egg-shaped head -- appeared in a cameo in the 2016 film "Star Trek Beyond."
Shatner's star power and wit -- he joked to CNN's Anderson Cooper that the New Shepard rocket, which has been mocked for its phallic appearance, was in fact "inseminating the space program" -- could provide a welcome distraction for Blue Origin.
The company is under a cloud of allegations, made by a former senior employee, about a "toxic" work culture with rampant sexual harassment and decision making that prioritized speed over safety.
Blue Origin denied the claims and said the employee was sacked two years ago for issues involving US export control regulations.
© 2021 AFP
William Shatner jokes with crowd at New York Comic Con about space flight: 'I'm Captain Kirk and I'm terrified'
CNN Digital
Friday, October 8, 2021
William Shatner spoke to a crowd at New York Comic Con on Thursday evening, just days before he will blast into space on a sub-orbital flight.
Much of his 45-minute speech included talk of the 90-year old actor's other projects, including his album, but near the end he explained how he got interested in blasting off.
Jason Ehrlich, a friend and the producer of Shatner's show "Better Late than Never," came to him about a year and a half ago and encouraged him to consider going into space.
"'You know, they are starting to send these rockets up with people into space. Wouldn't it be something if Captain Kirk went up there,'" Ehrlich said to Shatner.
"Jason, for God sakes, nobody cares about -- hum going up in - it was 55 years ago -- my God man -- um, hum, uh -- well maybe I should go up into space," Shatner recalled, detailing how he came around to wanting to go.
Shatner hoped he would be on the first Blue Origin flight, but "all of a sudden" Jeff Bezos and his brother were announced for the trip. "Then there was an old lady... and then there was a young lady," he said to a laughing audience.
"So finally they came to me on the second thing. They said 'all right, how would you like to go up. You'll be the oldest guy in space,'" Shatner recounted. "I don't want to be known as the oldest guy. I'm bloody Captain Kirk!"
Last week he went to Blue Origin launch site in Texas for two days to prepare for the flight.
"It's mind-numbingly endless," he said of the scenery. "You drive 100 miles and then you get to a little town called Van Horn, and then you turn left. And you drive another 50 miles."
He described the assurances given to him by Blue Origin staff as not entirely reassuring.
"The phrase that they use a lot was 'it's our best guess that...' Your best guess?" he told the crowd incredulously.
He then recounted initial problems with the Hubble Space Telescope and the events leading to the explosion of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger.
Shatner said past space travel disasters sometimes give him pause.
"We're human beings, we make mistakes," he said. "I'm thinking, I'm going up in a rocket and our best guess is it should be fine. So there is a little niggling fire of terror. I'm terrified. I'm Captain Kirk and I'm terrified!"
To the crowd's laughter he said the feeling is not constant.
"You know, I'm not really terrified. Yes I am. It comes and goes like a summer cold," he told the laughing audience.
He also talked about what he looked forward to seeing in space.
"Three minutes in the weightlessness of space, and the beauty of this oasis of Earth, and -- I was planning on pressing my nose against the window, you know, and my only hope was I wouldn't see somebody else looking back." Shatner said, referencing the classic 1963 Twilight Zone episode where he played a man who saw a creature on a the wing of a plane at 20,000 feet.
He added when his daughters were growing up they would have him recreate the scene every time they were on plane.
Shatner has not yet figured out what words he will utter when he reaches space, he said, but has been going over words that other people have used.
"What can I say that is different," he asked rhetorically. "I'll try and think of something to suggest how deeply I feel about the experience of looking into the limitless distance."
Are celebrity tourists eclipsing the real science done in space?
Bob McDonald's blog: Captain Kirk may really be going to
space, but he's not doing the real exploration
Actor William Shatner, famously known as Captain Kirk of the original 1960s Star Trek television series, is the latest in a line of celebrities slated to fly into space aboard a Blue Origin rocket. While these flights are great publicity for the emerging space tourism industry, it could overshadow the real science taking place in space.
At 90 years old, the Canadian-born Shatner will become the oldest person to ever reach space. He'll break the record set in July by 82-year-old Wally Funk, the pioneering female aviator who flew on board the first passenger flight of the Blue Origin rocket. She in turn had broken the record set by John Glenn, who spent nine days aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in 1998 at age 77. Glenn was a former astronaut, fighter pilot who had experienced the rigours of spaceflight and knew what to expect.
Mr. Shatner may find the ride to space a little less comfortable than the bridge of the starship Enterprise. He'll face the physical challenges of launch and re-entry as he is carried aloft on a straight up, straight down hop above the atmosphere. It may not be the crowning achievement of his long acting career, but it will be a major accomplishment for a very senior citizen.
Space tourism is definitely taking off. Jeff Bezos, the 57-year-old billionaire behind Blue Origin and founder of Amazon, also flew on his rocket's first passenger flight in July. That was just over a week after fellow billionaire and space tourism entrepreneur, Richard Branson, flew aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket plane at the age of 71.
In September four space tourists spent three days in orbit aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. And a Russian actor and film director are now aboard the International Space Station to shoot a movie about a medical emergency in space. Even Tom Cruise is talking about filming action scenes on the space station.
All this may sell tickets for space tourism and blockbuster movies, but will it detract from the real science that has been going on for more than 20 years on the space station by dedicated astronauts who spend years training for each flight?
The International Space Station is first and foremost a scientific laboratory operated by the U.S., Russia, Canada, Japan and 11 European nations. Oh, and it happens to be in space.
The walls, ceilings and floors are packed with scientific experiments holding everything from growth chambers that study how plants survive in microgravity, to a flame box that watches fire progress without gravity, to an aquarium and rodent box where we can see how animals adapt to a weightless world.
Over more than 20 years of operations, thousands of experiments have been done in the space laboratory, many of them using the astronauts and cosmonauts themselves as subjects.
For example, Scott Kelly spent almost a year up there and was part of a study that compared him to his identical twin who remained on Earth in an effort to understand the effects of prolonged spaceflight on the human body. This will be an important issue for future spacefarers who will make the long journey to Mars and back.
While NASA and the other space agencies have done a good job justifying the need for these experiments, what they don't seem to be as good at is advertising the results. We seldom hear about new drugs, new breakthroughs or new products that were developed thanks to research done on the space station, though NASA's website points to a raft of findings, from drugs for cancer, and muscular dystrophy, to new understandings of bone loss, to environmental science to improved water purification systems.
It is interesting that much of the public knows more about the adventures of a fictional space traveller on a fictional starship than they do about the actual people who are up there in a real space station.
It would be in the best interest of the space agencies to do a better job of publicizing the results of their space station research. It would go a long way towards justifying the upwards of $100 billion invested in the ISS. Otherwise it could end up looking like the world's most expensive movie set. Space science may not be as exciting as an action movie or seeing your favourite celebrity floating weightless, but it can still be enormously valuable.
In the meantime, good luck Mr. Shatner, as you boldly go where no nonagenarian has gone before.
Blue Origin is launching the TV star William
Shatner on Tuesday, but employees say
they wouldn't fly on that rocket
Blue Origin plans to fly "Star Trek" actor William Shatner and others to the edge of space Tuesday.
In a recent open letter, some Blue Origin employees said they wouldn't ride its New Shepard rocket.
New Shepard's emergency systems should protect passengers, but the letter raised safety concerns.
After launching its own founder, Jeff Bezos, to the edge of space this summer, the rocket company Blue Origin has moved on to its first celebrity customer.
William Shatner, the actor best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk in "Star Trek," is set to fly 62 miles above sea level aboard the company's New Shepard launch system on Tuesday. He'll share the spaceship with the former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, the healthcare entrepreneur Glen de Vries, and Blue Origin's vice president of mission and flight operations, Audrey Powers. The flight is automated, so no pilot will be on board.
At the peak of their 11-minute flight, the passengers will briefly experience weightlessness. They'll be able to see the curvature of the Earth and its thin atmosphere against the blackness of space.
Shatner, who is 90, will be the oldest person to reach the boundary of space, breaking the record set by 82-year-old aviator Wally Funk on Blue Origin's first passenger flight with Bezos.
"I'm thrilled and anxious and a little nervous and a little frightened about this whole new adventure," Shatner told the "Today" show on Tuesday.
But the flight comes amid fallout from a recent open letter from current and former Blue Origin employees. It called New Shepard's safety into question, with some of the anonymous employees who signed it saying they would not fly on the rocket themselves.
Spaceflight has always been risky, but the private companies now rocketing people to space face little government oversight. Passengers like Shatner fly at their own risk.
Employees said 'making progress for Jeff' trumps safety
New Shepard has flown 16 times without any apparent errors - a strong record. But some Blue Origin employees said in the letter that things look more concerning from the inside.
Alexandra Abrams, who used to head Blue Origin's employee communications, published the letter on the website Lioness last week. Abrams was the only named author, but she said 20 other current and former Blue Origin employees cowrote it. CBS News spoke with five of them, and two confirmed that they would not feel comfortable riding a Blue Origin spacecraft.
"Competing with other billionaires - and 'making progress for Jeff' - seemed to take precedence over safety concerns that would have slowed down the schedule," the letter said.
It continued: "Some of us felt that with the resources and staff available, leadership's race to launch at such a breakneck speed was seriously compromising flight safety."
The letter added that for many of the coauthors, safety was "the driving force" behind the decision to publish it.
"In the opinion of an engineer who has signed on to this essay, 'Blue Origin has been lucky that nothing has happened so far,'" the letter said. "Many of this essay's authors say they would not fly on a Blue Origin vehicle."
In a statement emailed to Insider, Blue Origin said, "We stand by our safety record and believe that New Shepard is the safest space vehicle ever designed or built."
The statement added that Abrams "was dismissed for cause two years ago after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations." Abrams has denied receiving such warnings.
New Shepard has safety features in case of emergency
The most nail-biting moments of a spaceflight are when the engines burn for liftoff, when the rocket separates from the capsule, and when parachutes deploy on the way down.
Blue Origin has not shared much detail about its testing process, but it has highlighted some of New Shepard's safety features.
Once the New Shepard rocket lifts off, it screams through the atmosphere for about three minutes before releasing the passenger capsule and falling back to Earth. During that time, if something goes wrong, an emergency-escape system should prompt the capsule to detach and jettison away from impending doom.
Blue Origin has tested that escape system three times - on the launchpad, in midair, and in space. Presumably, this means that if the rocket threatens to explode, the capsule should be able to carry its passengers to safety.
Then once the capsule is falling back to Earth, three parachutes should deploy. If one fails, the capsule is designed to give more thrust to its downward-facing engines. If two parachutes fail, a crushable "bumper" section on the bottom of the capsule should absorb the impact of landing.
"The capsule is the most highly redundant and safe spaceflight system, we think, that has ever been designed or flown," Gary Lai, senior director of New Shepard's design, says in a Blue Origin video about safety. "In most cases, you have a backup to the backup system."
The capsule also has oxygen masks, much like on an airplane, in case the cabin becomes depressurized.
Blue Origin passengers fly at their own risk
About 1% of US human spaceflights have resulted in a fatal accident, according to an analysis published earlier this year.
"That's pretty high. It's about 10,000 times more dangerous than flying on a commercial airliner," George Nield, a coauthor of that report, previously told Insider. Nield formerly served as the Federal Aviation Administration's associate administrator and led its Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
No federal agency regulates the safety of passengers on private commercial spaceflights. For now, the FAA just ensures that these rocket launches don't pose a threat to other aircraft or to people on the ground. However, in a statement emailed to Insider last week, the FAA said it was "reviewing" the open letter from Blue Origin employees.
