William Shatner.Photo: Mario Tama/Getty
Blue Origin founderJeff Bezosis reflecting onWilliam Shatner’s historic flight to the edge of space.
The day after 90-year-old Shatner flew aboard a Blue Origin ship to become theoldest person to ever travel to spaceon Wednesday, Bezos shared footage of the two sharing a moment together after the famedStar Trekactor returned safely to Earth.
“He’s not only the beloved character James T. Kirk who along with Gene Roddenberry and the whole cast and crew ofStar Trekinspired millions, but he’s also Bill Shatner. And Bill Shatner is an incredible man,” Bezos, 57, wrote onInstagramThursday.
“It feels like we gave each other the gift of space fifty years apart,” he added. “Thank you, Bill.”
Bezos, who is also the founder of Amazon and went to space in July, met Shatner immediately after he and the crew of three other passengers disembarked from the ship.
“In a way, it’s indescribable,” the Emmy Award-winning actor told Bezos duringBlue Origin’s livestream. “Not only is it different from what you thought, it happens so quickly.”
“Weightlessness. Oh, Jesus,” Shatner remarks in the clip, as laughs break out from the rest of the four-person crew.
“No description can equal this,” he later added. “Wow.”
Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s Vice President of Mission and Flight Operations, and crew members Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries, also joined Shatner on Wednesday’s voyage.
According to Blue Origin’sofficial website, the New Shepard vehicle, which can seat six astronauts, is “fully autonomous,” meaning there is no pilot.
RELATED VIDEO: William Shatner and Blue Origin Passengers Float In Space
The reusable craft’s 11-minute flights are “designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space,” the company’s website says.
Shatner’s flight came three months after Bezos' fellow billionaire entrepreneur,Sir Richard Branson,took his first trip to spaceaboard the VSS Unity spacecraft, Virgin Galactic’s first fully crewed flight test.
source: people.com
