Captain Kirk set to Launch into space with Blue Origin on October 12th, at 9:30 AM Est

On the original “Star Trek” TV series there was one captain, perhaps the most famous and decorated starship captains in the history of Starfleet. Captain James T Kirk, the commanding officer of the USS Enterprise, a Constitution class starship. Captain Kirk served the United Federation of Planets as an explorer, soldier, diplomat, and at times, a time traveler. William Shatner was the man that portrayed Captain Kirk. Starting on the second pilot of Star Trek he was then contracted to play the captain for the series and held the role from 1966 to 1969 during the shows original run on NBC. During this time the series took in only modest ratings and ended up cancelled after only three seasons. William Shatner went on to become a legend of the acting world, now being recognized world wild as the famous Captain Kirk.

In 1968, November 2nd to be exact Shatner kissed actress Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura on the show). This episode, “Plato’s Stepchildren” is popularly cited as the first example of a kiss between a white man and a black woman on a scripted television series in the United States. Now once again he will be making history as he will become the oldest human being ever to launch into space. At ninety years old Shatner will beat out the most recent holder of that record, Wally Funk. Funk at eighty-seven years old set the record last July when she flew on Blue Origins first human spaceflight mission with founder/CEO Jeff Bezos. Wally Funk herself stole that title from the late John Glenn who was one of NASA’s original seven Project Mercury astronauts, and the first American to ever orbit Earth n 1962. Later in 1998 he flew on Space Shuttle Discovery during the STS-95 mission at seventy-seven years old.

When Blue Origin launches from their Launch Site One in West Texas with Shatner and Three others on board the sixteen story tall rocket will launch roughly sixty-three miles upwards and release it’s crew capsule. The four passengers onboard will experience about four minutes of weightlessness in the microgravity of space before returning to Earth minutes later. The booster used to push the crew into the heavens will complete a vertical landing just a few miles where it launched, taking a page out of the SpaceX book on reusability while the crew capsule will return back shortly after using a set of parachutes to slow its decent before landing on the desert sand.

Mr. Shatner will be accompanied by two other paying customers and the Vice President of Blue Origin, Audrey Powers. One customer is Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of a satellite imagery firm named Planet Labs, the other Glen de Vries a co-found of the clinical research software Medidata. This experience for the three has to be complimented by the fact they are going with the original Captain Kirk, even if we are still unclear weather he will be wearing his Captain’s uniform or not.