Title: William Shatner (James Kirk, Captain of the Enterprise) goes to space on board New Shepard as part of mission NS 18. Blue Origin, 13 Oct 2021.
William Shatner goes to space - 13 October 2021
On 13th October 2021, William Shatner, the actor best known as Star Trek's Captain James Kirk, was transported to space in real life on board Blue Origin’s second successful human flight to lower orbit.
The crew of four in Mission NS-18
Blue Origin staff:
- Audrey Powers: Pilot and Blue Origin’s Vice-President of mission and flight operations. She was selected to represent Team Blue by the Senior Leadership Team at Blue Origin.
Customers:
- Dr Chris Boshuizen: Former NASA Engineer and Founder of Satellite company Planet Labs. The first Australian citizen to go to space.
- Glen de Vries: Co-Founder of medical company Medidata and Vice Chair of Life Sciences and Healthcare at Dessault Systemes.
Celebrity guest:
- William Shatner: Canadian actor, musician and entrepreneur, who at age 90 became the oldest person to go to space, adding another accolade to his stellar career.
William Shatner is best known for his portrayal of Captain James Tiberius Kirk in the science-fiction NBC television series Star Trek, which ran from 1966 to 1969. In the series, Captain Kirk commands the star ship “USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)” as he and his crew venture around the Milky Way Galaxy in the year 2266 The series inspired an unexpected cult following in the 1970s and Shatner returned to his role in the movie “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” in 1979, the first of 7 movies until “Star Trek Generation” in 1994.
Before Star Trek, Shatner had a 12-years career that began as a Shakespearean theatre actor in 1954, slowly progressing to film. After the cancellation of the television series he became typecast as Kirk and found it difficult to get good roles. He continued as an actor, writer and director in a multitude of films and television series and became CEO of a special effect studio (CORE Digital Pictures).
Shatner was awarded two Emmy Awards for his portrayal of Attorney Danny Crane in the series The Practice in 2004 and Boston Legal in 2005; the same year, he also won the Golden Globe Award for the later series.
In the music field, he released 8 albums and won the Voice Arts Icon Award for his spoken word work in 2015. William Shatner is certainly a legend in the entertainment industry and has a star in both, the Hollywood and Canada’s walk of fame.
On 7th March 2011, the crew of NASA’s shuttle Discovery had a wake-up call recorded by William Shatner, paraphrasing the introduction to his famous television series “Star Trek”, which read: "Space, the final frontier. These have been the voyages of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Her 30-year mission: To seek out new science. To build new outposts. To bring nations together on the final frontier. To boldly go, and do, what no spacecraft has done before." The theme song was composed by Alexander Courage in 1966.
In 2012, William Shatner narrated the landing of NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover, which was launched the previous year.
New Shepard - 18
The crew of NS-18 flew on a New Shepard rocket that proved her reliability with 17 successful consecutive flights. The rocket was composed of a re-usable first stage that boosted the “RSS First Step” crew-capsule into space. In preparation for their flight, the crew had two days of training at Blue Origin’s Astronaut Training Centre in Texas.
Hours before the flight, on 13 October 2021, the crew attended the “Coin Ceremony”, in which Crew Member 7, Sarah Knights, who was responsible of training and flight safety, presented each trainee with a coin to commemorate the event. The coin reads: “Gradatim Ferociter: You will be known in history for taking a pioneering first step towards millions of people living and working in space to benefit Earth. Presented by Crew member 7 for Spaceflight on New Shepard” (image on the right).
Gradatim Ferociter is Blue Origin’s motto meaning “Step by step, ferociously” referring to the gradual and decisive growth that they aim for in their actions.
The Crew also made their own postcards that flew with them together with postcards from supporters of the “Club for the Future”, a Blue Origin outreach programme that promises to fly your card to space and send it back to you with a stamp that reads “Flown to Space”. This free programme has flown over 170,000 cards to space so far. Students can use a template or create their own design and send their postcards to space with Blue Origin’s Club for the Future (see Blue Origin’s Partners below).
Crew of NS 18 show the cards they designed during training, which were flown to space as part of the “Club for the Future” programme. Shatner’s card read: “This is the most important and practical concept for space use and for aiding in saving planet Earth”. Bue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Crew member 7
Crew member 7 is a role shared by Sarah Knights and Kevin Sproge in this launch. Sarah has a background in physics, astronomy and STEM education and Kevin has 20-year experience as fighter pilot for the US Navy.
Besides the 6 passengers or crew in the crew capsule there is a crew member 7 who guides them and oversees training and flight safety. There are two crew member 7 assigned to each flight. This person is with the crew during training, leads them to the capsule ensuring they are safe in their seats, and after landing, verifies the crew is safe to exits the capsule. The other crew member 7 is called “Capsule Communicator” and relays all the mission control and launch operations to the astronauts. Capcom takes over communications during flight.
Launch of New Shepard - 18
Preparations for launch were carefully planned and rehearsed. The call “Go for Astronaut Load”, referred to the crew boarding the vehicles that drove them to the launch pad, where they posed for photographs.
The crew walked up the stairs to the top of the tower, rang a ceremonial bell (see image on the right) and shook hands with Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, before entering the “RSS First Step” capsule.
Following last safety checks by crew member 7, the hatch was closed 28 minutes before launch.
Mission NS-18 launched successfully on 13 October 2021 under clear skies, which allowed direct observation of the whole event from telescopes on the ground.
Launch of New Shepard 18 rocket to space. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Lift-off of the New Shepard 18 rocket from the launch pad in West Texas. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Ascending at an speed of over 3,500 kph, it took New Shepard 3 min 30 sec to reach 100 km of altitude and cross the Kámán line, officially entering space. The separated booster and capsule floated in zero gravity for four minutes and began their descent.
The booster completed an autonomous upright landing, while the capsule first deployed three drogue parachutes followed by the main ones to drastically slow down her fall before touching down on the desert of West Texas. The whole flight experience took 10 minutes.
The crew capsule descending towards the landing zone in West Texas after a 10 minute flight. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Successful second human flight, New Shepard's mission 18. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Crew capsule and the welcoming group after a successful landing on the Western Texas desert. In the background, the New Shepard rocket that landed safely on the landing pad. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
Jeff Bezos opened the hatch to welcome the new astronauts. They were filled with happiness and profound emotions, particularly William Shatner, who hoped to never recover from this experience. He was overwhelmed by the fragility of the atmosphere that from above looked like a thin layer of blue-sky representing life on Earth, surrounded by the endless blackness of space, reminiscent of death. “It was like moving in an instant from life to death”.
The crew of NS18 emerging from the capsule: William Shatner, greeted by Jeff Bezos, had an outpour of emotions after his flight to space.Audrey Powers’ family was there to welcome her as she was greeted by Sarah Knights, Crew Member 7. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
When NS-18 reached outer orbit, the count of humans that flew to space increased to 597 since Yuri Gagarin reached space in 1961.
Broadcast
Watch the broadcast of the launch of Blue Origin’s second human flight to space on board a New Shepard rocket on 13 October 2021, presented by Ariane Cornell, Senior Director of Astronaut and Orbital Sales and Jacki Cortese, Senior Manager of Civil Space Government Relations at Blue Origin (3hr).
William Shatner brought a message from space
The following interviews present William Shatner’s views and his message to the world, after his first unscripted reaction to reaching space went viral on the internet. He wants to give everyone a wake-up call to realise that life on this planet is only a sliver of air that needs saving.
Blue Origin’s partners
Blue Origin has partnered with a number of agencies involved in the promotion of space exploration. For example, the project Ianos, who’s host and content leader, Josh Bernstein, uses video interviews with experts in the field and offers a curriculum aimed at school teachers so that they can offer their middle-school students activities designed to inspire space exploration. Activities include: Data literacy skills, engineering design processes, prototype testing and building of concepts. Students also design postcards that are sent to Club for the Future to fly them to space.
The winning bidder of the first seat ticket on New Shepard auctioned at Blue Origin this year supported 19 charities that received a $1 million grant through Club for the Future.
Blue Origin partners in promoting space exploration include: Club for the Future, Project Ianos, AIAA Foundation, ASTRA Femina, Astronaut Scholarship Foundation, Brooke Owens Fellowship, AIF, Higher Orbits, SciArt Exchange, SEDS USA, Space for Humanity National Space Society, Space Camp, Space Art Foundation, Teachers in Space, Space Center Huston, Challenger Center, The Mars Society, Space Generation Advisory Council, Space Frontier Foundation and The Planetary Society.
Blue Origin partners in promoting space exploration. Blue Origin, 13 October 2021.
REFERENCES
2. » Wikipedia (2021) William Shatner [Online article]. Available here. (Accessed: 14 October 2021).
3. » Wikipedia (2021) Star Trek: The Original Series [Online article]. Available here. (Accessed: 14 October 2021).
== END of article “Captain Kirk goes to space – 13 Oct 2021” ==
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