A fully autonomous Blue Origin rocketship lifted off on Wednesday from a launch site in rural West Texas on a planned suborbital flight that made "Star Trek" actor William Shatner the oldest person ever in space.
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Shatner, at age 90, became the oldest person ever in space during a flight that lasted about 11 minutes. Blue Origin said the four astronauts experienced about three to four minutes of weightlessness and travel above the internationally recognized boundary of space known as the Karman Line, about 62 miles (100 km) above Earth. The crew capsule returned to the Texas desert under parachutes.
Winds were light and skies were clear for the launch, which was conducted after two delays totaling roughly 45 minutes.
Joining Shatner – who embodied the promise of space travel in the classic 1960s TV series "Star Trek" and seven subsequent films – in the all-civilian crew were former NASA engineer Chris Boshuizen, clinical research entrepreneur Glen de Vries and Blue Origin vice president and engineer Audrey Powers.
It marked the second space tourism flight for Blue Origin, billionaire US businessman Jeff Bezos's company founded two decades ago.
Shatner, who turned 90 in March, has been acting since the 1950s and remains busy with entertainment projects and fan conventions. He is best known for starring as Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise on the classic 1960s TV series "Star Trek" and seven subsequent films about fictional adventures in outer space.
Shatner said there is both irony and symmetry to his space trip, having played a space explorer for decades and now actually becoming one.
"Having played the role of Captain Kirk... assigns me the knowledge that a futuristic astronaut would have, but I've always been consumed with curiosity," said Shatner in a Blue Origin video.
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