Pretend starship captain to take trip in real space capsule The game of billionaire one-upmanship has continued with the confirmation that Blue Origin's next flight of its New Shepard sub-orbital capsule will contain veteran actor William Shatner. Shatner, famed for some nerdy TV show from the 1960s, had been rumoured as one of the crew taking flight on 12 October aboard NS-18. Joining …
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back in the 70's Shatner did a recruiting video for the U.S. Navy comparing submarines to space ships, in that they made their own air+water and that they traveled in a hostile environment in 3 dimensions, much like a space ship would. I saw it when the recruiters were trying to convince me to volunteer for sub duty. The extra pay had me convinced.
Just shows to go ya that the US Space Farce was created as a "political stunt" not in a reasoned and rational manner.
To model it after the Air Force, which has ZERO experience with relatively large crews in prolonged missions in environments hostile to Human life, in essentially self sustained machines, glossing over the Navy which has decades if not centuries of such experience, well . . .
These Billionaires are really intent on losing a passenger, or passengers. Flying a 90 year old Bill Shatner is not a real smooth move. Wish him luck. But I wish all these companies would quit calling their passengers, astronauts. Space tourists more aptly. At least SpaceX put their passengers in orbit, but they had a "commander, and "pilot" in an autonomous capsule.
William Shatner presumably signed up for this entirely voluntarily, and although he's certainly getting on a bit, he's in pretty good nick for his age. As someone whose work helped to inspire many people to take up careers pushing forward developments in space flight and other related aspects of research and technology, it seems very fitting that he gets to finally take part in a mission outside a studio set at last.
Of course I wish him good luck with this particular enterprise, but if he were (and I obviously hope not) to suffer a fatal heart attack or something during the flight, I suspect he would not disagree that it might not be an entirely inappropriate way to (boldly) go. At his age, I imagine he knows very well that he will eventually bump into the cloaked guy with the scythe sometime, and until that day comes, if you're not living, you are dying a little bit every day.
"NASA's Mercury programme, which ran in the years before that stupid telly show"
Oooohhhhh controversial!
How about this, Commentards?
Those that like [classic] Star Trek, upvote me.
Those that don't like [classic] Star Trek, downvote me.
No, I'm not trying to start a flame war, I'm genuinely interested in the love/hate split.
I enjoyed TOS when I was a child. My standards were much lower back then. "Best SciFi of the time" was a very low bar. I am afraid to go back to it now because I expect that my memories of enjoying it would be replaced by disappointment like with other old TV serieses I have tried to watch again.
Actually some of the plots are so good that they stand time regardless of the now dated sci-fi look. And the actors were good enough. The fact Roddenberry avoided to give them the late 1960/early 1970 look helps too.
Unlike most British sci-fi series that relied too much on (repetitive) special effects, but with bad and naive plots, so-so actors and now old looks - which makes them now hopelessly outdated.
It also depends on when you first saw it too. Watching TOS in the 90s as a child it looked 'old' then, so it doesn't appear to have dated anymore 30 years on.
Actually some of the plots are so good that they stand time regardless of the now dated sci-fi look
That's the thing, good writing will always stand the test of time. To quote Futurama:
"..you know 1966, 79 episodes... about 30 good ones..."
Unlike most British sci-fi series that relied too much on (repetitive) special effects, but with bad and naive plots, so-so actors and now old looks - which makes them now hopelessly outdated.
I'm going to stick up for British Sci-Fi a bit here, there was a fair amount of dreck, but it too has it's fair share of gems hidden in the rough.
Also, remember Star Trek looks cheap and dated because TV production has moved on significantly since then... the BBC stuff looks cheap because it was... even then.
I remember once reading how Dr Who in it's later years (pre-reboot) had a similar budget to Red Dwarf, the difference being Dr Who had that budget for a season, RD had it for an episode. Red Dwarf was not an expensive looking show. ;)
Reminds me of a fake Radio Times entry in a "Not the Nine O'clock News" (Yes, that long ago) annual I got that was something like this :
"This week the Doctor and his companions will be chased down the same pipe filled underground corridor by an extra wearing a hat with tentacles on"
"Can't beat the ending, good way to ensure no more sequels, I get tired of cop out series endings"
Blakes 7 lives on at Big Finish!
Maybe - but there are old movies that are still very good today and you can view easily even if they are old and they have to look old.
I recently viewed Buster Keaton's "The Cameraman" and I was stunned how he still looked "well" despite being a silent movie of almost a century ago. Sure, the 1928 New York, the hair styles and dress are outdated, but the film plot, photography and editing are still very good.
Then if one is used to the excessive and boring special effects of today "blockbuster" movies, and their attention span to the plot is measured in tenths of seconds, everything will look "outdated".
Still I can re-watch TOS - but I'm not able to watch again "UFO" or "Space 1999". Despite the Moonbase girls.... 1999 doesn't have even them. And I watched them all first at the same time.
There's a very good discussion of how Keaton made films in the "Every Frame a Painting" series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWEjxkkB8Xs
It crystallised for me why CGI special effects leave me stone cold unmoved. Keaton did his stuff for real.
It crystallised for me why CGI special effects leave me stone cold unmoved.
Recently watched the 'despecialised' fan edit of Star Wars, it was amazing how well the practical effects had stood up; much better than the 90s era CGI they tainted them with.
Keaton did his stuff for real.
...which included such things as 'not getting hit by giant boulders rolling down a hill', or clearing things from in front of a moving train by throwing railway sleepers at them
Railway sleepers!
Throwing!!
I bought the full DVD set for the series, and they redid all the orbital scenes and whatnot in modern CG.
It still looks dated, but the ship looks better than ever. You still have CRT monitors and industrial switches on the panels that occasionally blow up, to keep the nostalgia pumping.
They did a good job on the DVD remasterization.
Can't wait for the inevitable live video feed of Kirk is an horrendously drawn out fight sequence
gotta play "that music" in the background...
It is, taking the larger view of life, the universe, and everything, perhaps not really that important, but I feel it should be noted that Kirk was in fact not the libido-driven womanizer that we all know from our shared cultural awareness fuelled essentially by parodies and homages to Kirk.
Kirk was a diligent and dutiful captain, whose primary 'love' interest was the ship.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/691o8m/kirk_is_not_actually_a_womanizer/
Citing mainly this:
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/
From the essay:
Additionally, a former NASA astronaut and Blue Origin senior leader once instructed a group of women with whom he was collaborating: “You should ask my opinion because I am a man.”
I mean...sure. Perhaps some crazy person might speak like this. But it sounds a lot more likely to be a joke that's been written down in a neutral tone and because of the topic no-one's allowed to question it.
I'm sure there are problems there - it sounds like it. But this example only erodes that position, and does a disservice to people whose stories really do need to be told.
I am glad you live in environments where such a comment is so out of place that it sounds insane and ridiculous. Not all of the world is like that. There are still a large number of people who can with complete sincerity say something like "We should research the effects of injecting bleach to cure COVID". Shortly afterwards some poor PR flak has to give a press release: "He was joking!". That PR guy was taking a huge risk that someone would be able to convince the president not to double down on the statement.
There are people so out of touch with reality that they would whole heartedly agree with the former NASA astronaut's statement. Go back far enough in time and it would have been considered common sense.
"Dr Who doesn't do seat of the pants space transportation."
Oh, come ooooonnnnn! You're talking about a guy who had to live through multiple re-generations before he learned how to steer his "ship" properly. And he leave the handbrake on because he likes the noise it makes!
depending upon the type of light, the right kind of pulse width modulated signal COULD make it 'beep',...
I once saw an interesting demonstration of 2 electric probes with a certain type of salt poured on them within a gas flame. The flame created ions, which were then exposed to high voltage PWM (apparently) and you could hear sounds coming out of the flame...
@FlavioStanchina
That pun is so fucking awful I you deserve an upvote. Not because the pun is any good, but because it was so awful, I had to go the the 'fridge and open a 4pack of Kestrel (super. None of that girlie pop in my fridge).
Have one of these. I don't see why I should "suffer"on my own...
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And anyway, the Russians just launched a film producer and an actress up to the ISS to shoot some scenes for a film. Supposedly, she play a surgeon sent up to operate on a cosmonaut. That's the official line anyway. One wonders if there may be some X rated scenes filmed for a different film while there :-)
Ah, Blakes 7. I watched it all again recently. Some of it stood up well, some not so much. The Ben Steed episodes are by far the worst as they are appallingly sexist.
The main thing that stood out to me now, that obviously didn't occur to me when watching as a child is that Avon has to be the worst possible leader. He is responsible for most of the crew deaths, including the destruction of the Liberator, then he went and killed Blake.
The younger staff where I work do sometimes get a bit confused when they start talking about the Server LAN and wonder why my attention has wandered off somewhere else.
"...It will also make him the oldest human (at 90) to be launched into space..."...and the fattest.
One would think that Shatner alone would exceed the weight-allowance limits set by the FAA.
Stunts like this lets one know that Bezos is in trouble.
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