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To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before (Well, No 90-Year-Old Man)
The real Captain Kirk, the beloved William Shatner, has made it to the final frontier for real. At the age of 90, the intrepid Shatner visited space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard mission NS-18 today, Oct. 13, 2021.
Though Shatner is intrepid, he didn’t command the Intrepid. He commanded the Enterprise (and the Enterprise, and the Enterprise). The Intrepid, NCC-1631, had a Vulcan crew.
This historic flight occurred 51 years, one month, and seven days after the first airing of “Star Trek.” In Canada, which got to watch the show two days before we Americans. I don’t know whether or not this was because Shatner is a Canadian.
Shatner became the oldest person to fly in space.
You can watch it here. It’s about 12 minutes long.
Published in Technology
I have always loved Shatner’s ability to laugh at himself.
It’s a wonderful tribute to science fiction.
What we can conceive of, as a society, paves the way for action. Experiment, competition, and exploration.
Exploration being a fundamental human pursuit from 100,000 years ago.
Have to be impressed with William Shatner, too.
-He hasn’t beat up any women or said anything racist about Uhura, has he?-
Okay. I hope not…
It is pretty cool;
Sill a SpaceX fan
Well, I seem to recall that he kissed Uhura against her will once. But it was against his will, too.
Sulu was the one who sexually harassed Uhura. Well, mirror-universe Sulu, and he was a wimp anyway. As she explained, she said no, and he was supposed to come back. Ah, the good old days.
Thx. I had no idea it was like that. I suppose that’s what I get for not watching any teevee news for the last few decades.
Shatner is the perfect advertisement for it. It’s a great story though.
SpaceX gets into orbit, and even beyond. Bezos hasn’t. I don’t think Richard Branson’s rockets do either.
Kirk commanded original 1701, and 1701-A. He helped out the actual captain of 1701-B but never himself took command as far as I can tell.
Which reminds me.
Did you see anything good THAT day, Cameron??? errr, Captain Harriman?????
Did you ever see Spplat Attack?
A documentary about his participation in a paintball “war”. It’s fun.
Actually I thought the rest of his crew was a bit worried about what would happen after they landed…
Wellllllll, sort of. It depends. I love the guy, but interviewing him was
They were telekinetically compelled to do so, but the scene was played to indicate that neither found it unpleasent.
Let’s not forget reanimated Lincoln complimenting her as a “charming Negress,” although he apologizes for it right away as a relic of his own times. I’m still surprised the line remains in reruns.
If TOS hadn’t been cancelled already 50+ years ago, they’d cancel it now.
Especially since crazy scientists Daystrom and Erickson were both black.
Was Erickson crazy? Driven, and scarred, but he kept his marbles. In the case of Daystrom, it’s an interesting look into the casting decisions: surely they knew they were making a statement, but the show made no statement about it at all. In the 24th century, the fact that the most brilliant computer innovator was black would be unremarkable, and thus it meant nothing about race if the character had a fatal flaw. Trek was post-racial. But so was Ironside and Mission: Impossible.
Erickson was borderline, at least. Considering stuff like how he risked lives including his son’s on his new theory etc. And then risked the whole NX-01 and its crew trying to retrieve his son. In that sense he was like Daystrom risking the lives of Kirk’s Enterprise crew if they hadn’t been removed beforehand, so he wound up risking the lives of the other starships, many of whom wound up dying for his experiment.
Awesome. That’s all you need to describe it.
Just finished (RE)watching ‘Space Cowboys’ yesterday…life imitating art.
Still a great movie, IMHO
Emphasis on the word had.
Telekinetically or telepathically? Nerds need to know.
It’s something George Takei definitely does not have.
I’m just glad the three unknown redshirts in the crew also made it back.
Here’s the thing about that; Uhura barely realized his remark was inappropes. She was like, “Oh, honey, we are s-o-o-o-o-o over racism, words have no power to offend us.” That’s how post-racial TOS was.
Geordi LaForge was born in Mogadishu, according to his official biography. Star Trek really was optimistic.
Requesting parenthetically, yes?
As I said, George Takei is a wanker.
https://pagesix.com/2021/10/14/star-trek-star-george-takei-slams-william-shatners-spaceflight/
For all the narcissisms that Shatner has shown in his life, Takei just comes off sour and Shatner happy.
They said Telekinetically , but at one point they made Spoke have emotions. it was weird
I never saw it but it looks pretty funny.
Which is longer than the flight itself.
SpaceX is an actual business capable of more than just joyrides . . . although joyrides are still pretty cool.
Shatner is the ultimate Travaller Character. He did well on his aging rolls, Term after Term, and now he is ready to start adventuring.
There is a fair amount of humor in it. Definitely worth seeing at least once.
Ha ha can’t figure out you’re dying from a massive unicellular organism in a self-generated coal sack, look who’s so smart now
Quite. Although to be fair, as Spock said the organism was much hungrier at that time so it’s possible the Intrepid was destroyed before they saw much. He did say they didn’t know what was killing them. The “or would have understood it, had they known” part is more what reflects poorly on Vulcan intellect.