Like Captain Kirk, William Shatner Will Travel to Space (Almost)
Summary
The flight is scheduled for Oct. 12, and Mr. Shatner will be joined by two other paying customers: Chris Boshuizen, a co-founder of the satellite imagery firm Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, a co-founder of the clinical research software Medidata. The mission’s fourth passenger will be Audrey Powers, a Blue Origin vice president. From Blue Origin’s pad in West Texas, the 16-story-tall rocket will launch to an altitude of roughly 63 miles and release its gumdrop-shaped crew capsule. The New Shepard booster will return to Earth for a vertical landing a few miles from where it launched, while the crew capsule will fall back minutes later under a set of parachutes. The flight will not reach orbit, which requires a much more powerful rocket lifting a spacecraft to a much higher altitude.