Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Finally!

 

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origins finally propelled Capt. Kirk to the edge of
space this AM. If NASA had possessed any PR brains at the time,
they'd have put him on the shuttle Enterprise for its atmospheric
flight tests, back when they had the chance. 










Not Spock. Not Han or Luke. Not Buck, or Starbuck. And not Picard or Ryker nor even Data.

Captain Kirk, bitchez!












ADDENDUM:

In comments at SiG's place on this topic , our fellow blogger John Wilder noted, in full Shatneresque delivery (mad props for that one JW, btw):

"Yup. The man...did...more...for science...than almost any actor."

I repeat my reply to that observation here:

"Let's be fair, John: The man did more for science than NASA."


WTWT.

QED

As the tagline for the animated LOTR by Ralph Bakshi went at the time:

"One fantasy is more powerful than a thousand realities."

Oh, yes it is.


And anyone who didn't wish, at least once, to be on a real bridge like that one, coming out of warp to orbit a new M-class planet in some distant quadrant of the galaxy, is dead to me, and dead as a human being. Every time one of the eleventy Star Trek TV shows or movies taps into that, they brush a contact on the battery of the human soul, and Shatner was a copper rod straight to the main power supply of that for most of his adult life. And for that, he's the best Canadian actor the USA ever produced. 

If anyone on Earth ever deserved to see the view from 80km straight up, he did.

And if Bezos and Company missed a trick anywhere, it's that he should have sent Sulu, Chekov, and Uhura up with with him. Hell, Paramount Studios would have paid for the whole mission out of petty cash.

14 comments:

Noah Bawdy said...

He looks pretty damn good for 90 ! :)

Luwanee said...

Put a monkey in space 60 years ago, so what’s new.

Rick T said...

But, did the recovery crew wear Gorn suits??? Much more appropriate than chimp constumes for Shat..

idahohunter said...

Armstrong stepped on the moon, pretty COOL. But no one has fought and fucked their way across more galaxies than Capt. James T. Kirk.
IdahoHunter

GMay said...

Eh, Bezos is a shitheel who thinks the space race is won in the courtroom. But at least The Shat got to go to space, which is awesome. I thought Bezos was about to go with them, till I saw him secure the hatch from the outside. Up to that point, I was pretty torn over wanting it to be a safe mission, or having Darth Bezos's mortal coil vaporized in the upper atmosphere.

BigCountryExpat said...

Only -other- one who got there ahead sorta kinda was James Doohan back a ways back... leastways some of his ashes did... Great that the Mummy Kirk made it (thankfully he didn't melt and/or spontaneously combust on reentry) but it seems that Scotty, or part of Scotty got smuggled up to the ISS in 2008 and said-self admitted smuggler-dood said he stuffed a small vial of cremains into a hidden 'crevasse' in or on one of the modules... from what I can tell, NASA after the fact was like "Meh!"... story was here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2020/12/28/star-trek-scotty-james-doohans-ashes-smuggled-space-station/4057236001/

BTW: The Bartertown Meme? That gets you the Deadpool Crisp High Five man... I was rolling on that 'un Aye.

Mike Austin said...

To boldly go where no (90 year old) man has gone before.

Old NFO said...

Whatever...

Mike Austin said...

Amazon Prime offers free the original Star Trek. Each episode has been re-mastered, and the result is stunning. It is as if you are watching an entirely new series.

I watched the original as a boy of 13 on a small black and white television.

You can once again watch James T. Kirk---in Idahohunter's words---fight and f*** his way across galaxies.

Jeb Texas said...

Yeah, I'm glad Mr. Shatner got to go to (almost) space, I just wish it had been in orbit, and on the ONLY man-rated US rocket currently capable of reaching orbit. Elon needs to turn every 20th launch into a joy ride to orbit & back. Talk about PR gold!

idahohunter said...

The green girl! Ooooh the green girl.
IdahoHunter

John Wilder said...

If he had been in orbit would he have been a Shatterlite?

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

This is actually a pretty big PR win for someone. A shame a nationally funded bureaucratic entity did engage in the forward thinking to actually do this long ago.

Chuck said...

Answers the Kirk vs. Picard debate for ever.