Blue Origin Returns to Space with Captain Kirk

Three months after Jeff Bezos, the millionaire American businessman, soared into Space aboard a rocketship created by his Blue Origin Company. The vessel will carry another all-civilian crew on a suborbital journey on Wednesday, this time with “Star Trek” actor William Shatner in the lead role. Shatner, who was chosen as one of four passengers for the journey, will be the oldest person to ever travel into Space at 90.

Shatner has become a pop-cultural icon for Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise in the iconic 1960s television series and seven following films. Shatner will now be able to carry out his quest to explore “Space – the final frontier,” which he stated during the opening credits of each episode of the series. Shatner and his fellow passengers will board Blue Origin’s fully autonomous 60-foot-tall New Shepard rocket on Wednesday at 9 a.m. CDT from a launch site outside the rural west Texas town of Van Horn on a journey to the edge of, following a 24-hour wind-related postponement.

“I’m going to see the vastness of Space and the extraordinary miracle of our Earth and how fragile it is compared to the forces at work in the universe,” Shatner told NBC’s “Today” program. “I’m thrilled and anxious – and a little nervous and a little frightened – about this whole new adventure.” On Tuesday, the four crew members received training, and the mission team underwent a flight readiness assessment to confirm that all systems went for launch.

The launch is another critical test of Blue Origin’s technology. It competes with billionaire-backed rivals such as Elon Musk’s Space X and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc for consumers prepared to pay a lot of money to experience the thrill of flight.