90-Year-Old Actor, 3 Others Embark On 10 Minutes Space Trip

Hollywood’s Captain Kirk, 90-year-old William Shatner, blasted into space Wednesday in a convergence of science fiction and science reality, reaching the final frontier aboard a ship built by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company.

The “Star Trek” actor and three fellow passengers hurtled to an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers) over the West Texas desert in the fully automated capsule, then safely parachuted back to Earth in a flight that lasted just over 10 minutes.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience,” an exhilarated Shatner told Bezos after climbing out of the hatch, the words spilling from him in a soliloquy almost as long as the flight. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”

He said that going from the blue sky to the utter blackness of space was a moving experience: “In an instant you go, `Whoa, that’s death.′ That’s what I saw.”

NASA sent best wishes ahead of the flight, tweeting: “You are, and always shall be, our friend.”

The flight brought priceless star power to Bezos’ space-tourism business, given its built-in appeal to baby boomers, celebrity watchers and space enthusiasts.

Shatner and his crewmates wore close-fitting, flame-retardant, royal-blue flight suits, not exactly the tight, futuristic-for-the-’60s V-necks that the crew of the Enterprise had on TV.

The actor said he was struck by the vulnerability of Earth and the relative sliver of its atmosphere.

“Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see,” he said.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX made its first private voyage in mid-September, though without Musk on board.

Last week, the Russians launched an actor and a film director to the International Space Station for a movie-making project.

Blue Origin said it plans one more passenger flight this year and several more in 2022.