Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, announced plans
on Monday for its next flight and the news and entertainment website TMZ
said it may include a celebrity astronaut -- William Shatner, who played
Captain Kirk on "Star Trek."
TMZ reported
that the 90-year-old Shatner would be on the October 12 voyage, making him
the oldest person ever to go to space.
Blue Origin revealed the names of two members of the four-person crew but
did not confirm that Shatner would be on the flight.
It said Chris Boshuizen, a former NASA engineer and co-founder of Planet
Labs, and Glen de Vries, a co-founder of clinical research platform Medidata
Solutions, would be on the rocket and the names of the two other astronauts
will be revealed "in the coming days."
Blue Origin said the New Shepard rocket would blast off from the company's
launch site in west Texas at 8:30 am Central time (1330 GMT) on October 12.
Bezos, the world's wealthiest man, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally
Funk, and paying customer, Oliver Daemen, flew into space on Blue Origin's
first crewed flight on July 20.
Funk, at 82, and Daemen, 18, were the oldest and youngest persons ever to go
into space.
The 10-minute trip took them beyond the Karman line -- the internationally
recognized boundary marking the start of space -- and back again to Earth.
The October 12 flight will replicate that trip.
Blue Origin quoted Boshuizen as saying that the upcoming flight would be the
"fulfillment of my greatest childhood dream."
De Vries, a vice chair at Dassault Systemes, which acquired Medidata in
2019, said the trip "is truly a dream come true."
Blue Origin's first crewed flight came just days after one by Virgin
Galactic founder Richard Branson, who crossed the final frontier on July 11,
narrowly beating the Amazon magnate in their space battle of the
billionaires.
Source: Link
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