Shatner inspired tin-foil rocketeers of all ages

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/10/2021 (1483 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When I was a pasty-faced kid growing up in Vancouver, I was more than mildly obsessed with the possibility that, one day, I could be blasted into outer space.

My futuristic space fantasies were initially fuelled by spending hours in front of our TV staring at reruns of the classic black-and-white adventure serial Commando Cody: Sky Marshall of the Universe.

This was a highly realistic TV show in which the hero, known as Rocketman, battled the forces of evil by strapping on a rocket-powered black leather jacket, which he operated via highly advanced controls on his chest in the form of three dials labelled “Up,” “Down,” and “Speed.”

Sitting in my pyjamas, I’d watch Rocketman blast off by the standard method of running real fast, wearing a bullet-shaped aluminum helmet that looked like an upside-down garbage container with eye holes cut out, jumping on a hidden trampoline, then, suspended by clearly visible wires, “flying” in an uncomfortable horizontal position with his arms thrust forward.

Which resulted in my eight-year-old self attempting to become a real-life Rocketman by making my own jetpack and futuristic silver jumpsuit. My “jetpack” consisted of two rolls of paper towel wrapped in tin foil and strapped on my back; whereas the rocket suit was a stroke of genius: I took an entire roll of tin foil and, with surgical precision, wrapped it around my pudgy little body until, as if by magic, I was transformed into… a giant baked potato.

In this eye-catching space garb, I’d zip bravely around our neighbourhood, by which I mean I’d waddle in a painfully awkward manner because — as you will know if you’ve ever tried it — it is difficult to zip when your medically sensitive regions are wrapped tightly in tin foil.

Yes, it’s an extremely embarrassing memory but I needed to share it with you today to explain why I was literally over the moon with excitement Wednesday when I watched 90-year-old William “Captain Kirk” Shatner live my childhood dream when he became the oldest human being to ever be launched into space.

What with being a longtime Star Trek fanatic, a science fiction geek, and a legendary couch potato, it was thrilling to see Captain Kirk — who first flew into our living rooms on the Starship Enterprise on Sept. 8, 1966 — finally reach the final frontier in real life aboard a spaceship built by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company.

Shatner and three other passengers soared to an estimated 107 kilometres over the West Texas desert in the fully automated New Shepard capsule, then safely parachuted to the desert floor in a flight that lasted just over 10 minutes.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience,” an exhilarated Shatner told Bezos after climbing out of the hatch. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”

Parked in front of my big-screen TV, I felt more than a tinge of envy as I flashed back on the memory of a pudgy kid wrapped in tin foil and racing around his yard because his feverish little brain couldn’t wait for a chance to reach for the stars. I was especially jealous of the fact Shatner got to spend approximately three minutes of weightlessness gazing down at Earth, his nose pressed against the capsule windows.

For the record, Captain James T. Kirk is not the first Canadian to blast into space. His joyride was preceded by about 10 fully-trained Canuck astronauts.

He also wasn’t the first member of the original Star Trek family to reach the final frontier. In 1992, a portion of series creator Gene Roddenberry’s ashes were carried by an astronaut on Space Shuttle Columbia, and space funeral company Celestis sent some aloft in 1997. On May, 22, 2012, some of James “Scotty” Doohan’s cremated remains were launched from Cape Canaveral inside a shiny canister the size of a tube of lipstick.

Shatner didn’t have to shell out big bucks for his joyride, because he rode free as Bezos’s invited guest. Sending Captain Kirk into space brought priceless star power to Bezos’s spaceship company, given its built-in appeal to baby boomers like me.

The thing is, right now, it’s really only billionaires and their invited guests who can afford to soar into space on private rockets. But Shatner’s trip, watched by eyeballs all around the world, can help change that.

Blue Origin has been tight-lipped about the price of its tickets, opting for private sales that Bezos claims have hit more than $100 million in bookings. Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson’s company has set a starting price tag for seats on its rival space tourism voyages at US$450,000.

The point is the cost of going into space is ridiculous, and the only logical way the price is going to come down is if more people start lining up for a chance to shed their tin-foil spacesuits and live the dream in real life.

The only way for that to happen is for private flights to generate some serious buzz, the kind of buzz a 90-year-old Canadian actor famous for his Breathless. Kirkian. Staccato. Delivery. Provided. This. Week.

By turning science fiction into science fact, Shatner is fuelling hopes that the rest of us earthbound geeks might one day get a chance to “boldly go.”

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca