And what Shatner saw in those fleeting minutes was revelatory. Yet his brief flirtation with weightlessness was exhilarating.
And forget about exploring “strange new worlds.” The 90-year-old Shatner and the other three passengers aboard the automated capsule merely hurtled 106 kilometres above the West Texas desert to the edge of outer space before parachuting back to Earth. Kirk on Star Trek, this adventure lasted just over 10 minutes. Unlike the supposed five-year mission Shatner undertook as Capt.
What some humans first imagined on television, others gradually began doing in real life.Īnd then, last Wednesday, the convergence of science fiction and science fact continued with the journey of Star Trek’s star - Canadian William Shatner - high above the Earth aboard a ship built by Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin company. After that, space shuttles, space stations, spacecraft to Mars and unmanned planetary exploration probes that entered interstellar space expanded our understanding of the universe and our tiny place in it many times over. Less than three years later, the first humans landed on the moon. 8, 1966, the science fiction TV series Star Trek began taking thrilled viewers on a weekly, imaginary outer-space odyssey “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The human mind travels faster and often farther than the human body.
