Star Trek Captain Kirk in space on Blue Origin

Captain Kirk flies into space today, albeit for a few minutes.

William Shatner, the 90 / year old Canadian actor who played the commander of the Enterprise in the legendary Star Trek series and who will become the oldest person to touch the cosmos, is in fact one of the four "tourists" that will be launched today aboard Blue Origin in the space program of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, now at its second launch.

    The launch, postponed yesterday due to the wind, is scheduled for today at 15.30 Italian time from the launch base in west Texas. The Blue Origin capsule will detach from the reusable New Shepard rocket and stop for a few minutes in zero gravity beyond the so-called 'Karman Line', located at 100 km altitude, which conventionally marks the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and the space. The capsule will then fall back to Earth held back by three large parachutes and a rear-propeller, a short distance from the launch base. The whole thing will last 11 minutes.

    The other three passengers are Chris Boshuizen, former NASA technician and co-founder of the Planet Labs association who every day photographs the earth in high resolution from some satellites;

Glen de Vries, a biomedical software entrepreneur, and the only woman, Audrey Powers, an executive on the same Blue Origin project as Bezos.