The newest addition to the next Blue Origin space flight is William Shatner who is known for his role as James T. Kirk in the “Star Trek” franchise.
The 90-year-old actor will be joining the other two paying customers and a Blue Origin executive on Oct. 12th brief space trip according to the space company on Monday.
Shatner will however become the older person to ever go into space as the current record holder is an 82-year-old former astronaut trainee Wally Funk who was aboard the first trip back in July.
Blue Origin’s mission is to build a potential space tourism industry whereby those that can afford it can enjoy the lavish lifestyle of flying into the edge of space and see the curvature of our beautiful planet.
Even though there have been multiple criticisms about this stance especially the average amount spent on each of these trips. People just seem to always find a reason not to like Jeff Bezos because let’s face it, the man is kind of very controversial but he’s also the richest man on the planet which is a status that will be quite hard to achieve for billions of us.
The space race and war of words continue to play louder between Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaire Elon Musk with the former suing everyone on its way – even Musk making fun of Blue Origin’s tactics by saying “You can’t sue your way to the moon.”
Bezos has compared space tourists to stunt pilots in the early days of aviation, who helped fuel public fascination with planes before they became a common mode of transport.
Other crew members on the upcoming flight include Chris Boshuizen who the co-founder of satellite imagery provider Planet Labs and Glen Vries who is the vice-chair of life sciences and health care at Dassault Systemes.
Another crew member will be Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations Audrey Powers. And for those of you wondering how much each seat costs, the price is yet to be revealed but it’s definitely going to cost a lot.