SCI 'Beam Me Up, Scotty': William Shatner to Actually Go Into Space

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
How high did the suborbital flight reach? The generally accepted definition for "space" begins at 60 mi/100 km up.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Well, there goes the record held by John Glenn: The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn made history again when, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space ...

Depending on whether or not you accept the Karman Line as the beginning of space, the previous Blue Origin's flight sent aloft Wally Funk, age 82, beating Glenn's record. And now Shatner is the oldest at age 90.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
350,000-plus feet would do it ...

"Fédération aéronautique internationale (FAI) defines the Kármán line as space beginning 100 kilometres (54 nautical miles; 62 miles; 330,000 feet) above Earth's mean sea level." (Wikipedia)
 

AnniePutin

Veteran Member
I loved Shatner's view of the fragility of earth, oxygen, and blue skies - and life itself, as just a narrow, fragile band - with darkness, the unknown - death, stretching beyond. It was pretty profound, and he was obviously genuinely moved. Thumbs up, Captain Kirk!
 

Hfcomms

EN66iq
Glad he had the experience before he died. Fitting for him to be able to do this. Wonder how his back is feeling though, the capsule landed and still had a 13 mph impact and that still has to jar your teeth even if your on your back.
 

dstraito

TB Fanatic
It was really cool to watch.

The cynical woo side of me says if they were going to fake it who better to act it than Shatner.

I was questioning o. the last launch during the ascent how one astronaut lifted him arm and touched the shoulder of the guy next to him as if in celebration and the other guy raised his arm in acknowledgement.

I would have thought there would have been enough G forces to make that difficult.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
A bit of quick searching says the Saturn V launched with about 4 gravities and the Blue Origins launch with anywhere from 3-5.5 gravities (presumably depending on where they are in the flight). I think (but don't know) that above 5 gravities you'd be hard pressed to breathe easily or move your arms around freely, but at 3 gravities you could probably move your arms easily enough if you put your mind to it.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
For what it's worth, tomorrow sometime about mid-day East Coast time (Friday, 16:23 UTC) the Chinese plan to launch their latest manned mission (Shenzhou-13, with three taikonauts) to their new space station. And then on Saturday sometime around 4:00 a.m. East Coast time (Saturday, 09:34 UTC) NASA plan to launch our latest deep space mission, Lucy, which will (with a little luck) check out eight different asteroids [Lucy (spacecraft) - Wikipedia].
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
The Blue Origin's ride was of a short and more-or-less known length, and I'd bet they had at least some kind of medical people standing by for touchdown, so if Shatner had developed any medical issues they would have been able to get to him very quickly. If he had gone into orbit and something serious happened he could well have died there waiting for the landing -- depending on altitude, of course, but call it about 90 minutes per orbit and who knows how many orbits before descent could start for the target recovery area. So far there have been only three (I think) known deaths in actual space (all Soviets) and no one is particularly eager to add to that list. On the other hand, I suppose it would have put a pretty impressive period to the end of Shatner's life.
 

vector7

Dot Collector

TheSearcher

Are you sure about that?
William Shatner: BTW, since it seems to be the latest “thing” on here. I’m stating that I’m staying on Twitter. Besides I think @elonmusk is adorbs. Also, full disclosure: I’m trying to pitch Elon to hire me as face of Twitter.

Elon Musk: You will always be my Captain
View: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1520192322511724544?s=20&t=_tMBdx9-DpudSX0QmN6biw
Bezos is probably shooting packing peanuts out of his ears. LOL
 
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