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Business

William Shatner set to launch on Blue Origin New Shepard flight

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More than 50 years after he debuted as the beloved Capt. James T. Kirk in the original series of “Star Trek,” William Shatner is set to boldly go to the edge of space.

The 90-year-old actor is scheduled to launch Wednesday aboard a rocket and capsule developed by Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. If successful, the joyride will make Shatner the oldest person to reach space.

“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” he said in a statement released earlier this month. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.”

Shatner and three other crew members — Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations, and two paying customers, Glen de Vries and Chris Boshuizen — will ride Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket and capsule to the edge of space. Liftoff is scheduled to occur at 10 a.m. ET and the flight is expected to last roughly 10 minutes.

Chris Boshuizen, William Shatner, Audrey Powers and Glen de Vries are scheduled to launch Oct. 13, 2021.Blue Origin / via AP

In an interview last week with NBC’s “TODAY” show, Shatner spoke about his anticipation for the upcoming flight.

“I’m going to see the vastness of space and the extraordinary miracle of our Earth and how fragile it is compared to the forces at work in the universe — that’s really what I’m looking for,” he said.

Shatner’s trip will be Blue Origin’s second launch of an all-civilian crew. The company’s inaugural flight in July was a high-profile and high-stakes event, with Bezos, his brother and two other passengers onboard.

The New Shepard rocket and capsule are designed for suborbital jaunts, which don’t actually enter into orbit around Earth but rather fly to the edge of space, at an altitude of more than 65 miles, where passengers can experience around four minutes of weightlessness.

Wednesday’s flight will launch from a site in west Texas, southeast of El Paso. After liftoff, the rocket will accelerate toward space at three times the speed of sound. At an altitude of 250,000 feet, the New Shepard capsule will separate, taking Shatner and his crew members to the edge of space.

The craft will then descend under parachutes and land again in the Texas desert.

Shatner’s expedition is the latest in what has been a recent flurry of space tourism flights. Nine days before Bezos flew to the edge of space, British billionaire Richard Branson completed his own suborbital joyride, riding aboard a rocket-powered vehicle developed by his own space tourism company, Virgin Galactic.

Neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic have announced final pricing for their suborbital flights, but tickets are expected to cost several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And in addition to trips to the edge of space, people with deep pockets may soon be able to pay for orbital experiences and more prolonged stays in microgravity.

Last month, SpaceX, the spaceflight company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, launched four private passengers into orbit around Earth on a three-day expedition. That flight made history as the first orbital launch with an all-civilian crew.

SpaceX is also preparing to launch three private passengers who each paid $55 million to the International Space Station in early 2022.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on general science and climate change.

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Business

William Shatner rockets to space with Blue Origin: How to watch live

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The crew of Blue Origin’s NS18 mission.


Blue Origin

Blue Origin plans to make its second crewed flight ever on Wednesday, this time carrying the alter ego of one of the most iconic space travelers ever.

The first flight of a New Shepard rocket
with humans aboard launched July 20 and carried company founder and mega-rich guy Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, aviation pioneer Wally Funk and student Oliver Daemen on a quick trip to space. This time around the headline passenger is William Shatner, the 90-year-old veteran actor best known for playing James T. Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise in the Star Trek universe.

“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” Shatner said cheekily in a statement last week. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.”

The mission, dubbed NS18, is set to liftoff at 6:30 a.m. PT (8:30 a.m. CT) Wednesday, Oct. 13. Live coverage from Blue Origin is set to begin 90 minutes earlier and will be streamed live. CNET’s livestreamed coverage of the launch is below.

Shatner will be joined in the New Shepard capsule by Chris Boshuizen, former NASA engineer and co-founder of satellite imaging company Planet Labs; Glen de Vries, an entrepreneur and executive with French software company Dassault Systemes; and Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations, Audrey Powers.

The quartet will blast off from Blue Origin’s west Texas launch facility Wednesday morning. A few minutes into the flight, the capsule will separate from the booster and continue on to suborbital space, where the crew will get to experience weightlessness and an epic view of Earth before reentering the atmosphere for a parachute-assisted soft landing in the desert. The whole experience should last around 15 minutes. 

After separation, the New Shepard booster returns for an autonomous landing on the ground to be reused in the future. 


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Shatner, who has also released over 10 albums as a recording artist, says he plans to write a song about the experience for his next album. 

“I want to write about my love of Earth,” Shatner said in an interview posted to Twitter.

The launch was originally scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 12, but got bumped to the following day because of winds in the forecast.

“The mission operations team confirmed the vehicle has met all mission requirements and astronauts began their training today,” Blue Origin said in a statement Sunday morning. “Weather is the only gating factor for the launch window.”

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Science

Astronaut’s Photo Shows a Huge Blue Flash in Earth’s Atmosphere

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The blue flash, seen in this photograph taken by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet.

Last week, an astronaut aboard the International Space Station captured a lightning strike over Europe. But unlike most lightning, this electrical outburst was not a bunch of spiky tendrils but rather a big blue bubble over the continent.

The “transient luminous event,” as such upper atmospheric lightning is known, was spotted in a timelapse taken by French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. This sort of lightning looks different from the flashes that occur in and below storm clouds and tends to be much larger.

There are sprites, which are vertical, supertall bright flashes of red or bluish-green light; jets, which tend to be blue and occur in the stratosphere; and elves, which are very high-altitude electromagnetic pulses. There are also trolls, which are jet-like, and other magically named luminous forms of lightning that happen above the clouds.

The colors of the various phenomena are shaped by the atmosphere; on Earth, nitrogen makes sprites appear red, but on Jupiter, a hydrogen-rich atmosphere would make sprites blue.

Since 2018, the ASIM experiment aboard the ISS has observed these forms of giant lightning. It is the successor to the earlier THOR experiment proposed by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who caught blue jets and red sprites on video over the Bay of Bengal in 2015.

These forms of lightning are extraordinarily brief, so researchers had to go back through Mogensen’s footage frame-by-frame to pick out specific phenomena. Similarly, Pesquet’s photo of the recent transient luminous event was extracted from a longer timelapse of the night sky.

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In a caption for the new photo posted online, Pesquet noted that the ISS is well-positioned to photograph such phenomena, as it flies over the equator, where more thunderstorms occur. This particular event popped up somewhere southeast of Italy, as the picture shows.

“What is fascinating about this lightning is that just a few decades ago they had been observed anecdotally by pilots and scientists were not convinced they actually existed,” he wrote. “Fast forward a few years and we can confirm elves, and sprites are very real and could be influencing our climate too!”

More observations like this one are sure to come and reveal more about these brilliant natural phenomena, so dazzling that they required supernatural names.

More: Record-Breaking Lightning Just Chilled in the Sky For 17 Seconds

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Business

Inside Blue Origin: Employees say toxic, dysfunctional ‘bro culture’ led to mistrust, low morale and delays at Jeff Bezos’s space venture – The Washington Post

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  1. Inside Blue Origin: Employees say toxic, dysfunctional ‘bro culture’ led to mistrust, low morale and delays at Jeff Bezos’s space venture The Washington Post
  2. Blue Origin New Shepard NS-18 launch with William Shatner delayed because of weather Fox Business
  3. Blue Origin crew, including “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, on this week’s rocket launch CBS Mornings
  4. Blue Origin is taking William Shatner to space — but can it distract from internal criticism? | TheHill The Hill
  5. William Shatner channels Captain Kirk for historic space flight GMA
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Science

What The Heck Was This Blue ‘Luminous Event’ Photographed From The Space Station?

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On October 8, French astronaut Thomas Pesquet captured something strikingly rare from on board the International Space Station (ISS).

The photo – which is a single frame taken from a longer timelapse – might look like it shows a cobalt bomb exploding over Europe, but this scary-looking blue light didn’t do any damage. In fact, most people would never have noticed it happening.

 

Instead, the frame shows something far less ominous called a ‘transient luminous event’ – a lightning-like phenomenon striking upwards in the upper atmosphere.

Also known as upper-atmospheric lighting, transient luminous events are a bunch of related phenomena which occur during thunderstorms, but significantly above where normal lighting would appear. While related to lighting, they work a little bit differently.

There are ‘blue jets’, which happen lower down in the stratosphere, triggered by lightning. If the lighting propagates through the negatively charged (top) region of the thunderstorm clouds before it gets through the positive region below, the lightning ends up striking upwards, igniting a blue glow from molecular nitrogen.

Then there are red SPRITES (Stratospheric/mesospheric Perturbations Resulting from Intense Thunderstorm Electrification) – electrical discharges that often glow red, occurring high above a thunderstorm cell, triggered by disturbances from the lightning below – and slightly dimmer red ELVES (Emission of Light and Very Low Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources) in the ionosphere.

Sticking with the theme, there are also TROLLs (Transient Red Optical Luminous Lineaments) which occur after strong SPRITES, as well as Pixies and GHOSTS. We’re sure the scientists had lots of fun naming all of these phenomena.

 

“What is fascinating about this lightning is that just a few decades ago they had been observed anecdotally by pilots, and scientists were not convinced they actually existed,” Pesquet explains in a photo caption.

“Fast forward a few years and we can confirm elves, and sprites are very real and could be influencing our climate too!”

Although Pesquet doesn’t explain specifically which type of luminous event we’re seeing, this particular image could be showing a ‘blue starter’, which is a blue jet that doesn’t quite make it to the jet part, and instead creates a shorter and brighter glow.

These events are particularly hard to photograph from the ground as they are both very high in the sky and also regularly obscured by storm clouds. Plus, the phenomena usually only last for milliseconds or a couple of seconds each time.

With all those things in mind, it makes the ISS a particularly great place to look for these transient events, particularly if you have a timelapse turned on. So far we’ve seen a number of these events captured by astronauts on the ISS, and a small number taken from the ground.

Interestingly, Earth isn’t even the only place where the light shows take place, with researchers discovering just last year that ‘blue sprites’ were occurring on Jupiter too.

“The Space Station is extremely well suited for this observatory as it flies over the equator where there are more thunderstorms,” says Pesquet.

“This is a very rare occurrence and we have a facility outside Europe’s Columbus laboratory dedicated to observing these flashes of light.”

We hope that this research will give us plenty more photos of this incredible phenomena in the future!

 



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Business

William Shatner’s Blue Origin launch on New Shepard: Live updates

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William Shatner is weighing in on his upcoming launch into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket next week, and apparently the 90-year-old Trek actor is thrilled. 

“We talk about space and what weightless conditions are, the enormity of the universe and the absolute jewel of a little thing we call the Earth by comparison,” Shatner told NBC’s Today Show this morning. “I’m going to feel that with the same enormity that I felt this electrical storm last night.”

You can watch the interview above, courtesy of the Today Show. 

Shatner will launch on a suborbital flight aboard New Shepard on Oct. 12 from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas. He will fly with three other passengers, including two paying customers for Blue Origin. The flight will make Shatner the oldest person to fly in space.

William Shatner to launch on Blue Origin’s New Shepard

Actor William Shatner, at left, and Blue Origin Vice President of Mission & Flight Operations, at right, will fill the final two seats on the Oct. 12, 2021, New Shepard crewed flight. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Captain Kirk is headed to space.

William Shatner, the 90-year-old actor who starred as Captain Kirk on “Star Trek: The Original Series,” will launch on a suborbital spaceflight aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft on Oct. 12, 2021, the company announced today (Oct. 4). 

Shatner, whose flight was hinted at last month by TMZ, is officially launching on Blue Origin’s second crewed spaceflight. Liftoff is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT) from the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas near the town of Van Horn. He will become the oldest person ever to fly in space with the mission.

Star Trek streaming guide: Where to watch the Star Trek movies and TV shows online

Joining Shatner on New Shepard will be: Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of missions and flight operations; Chris Boshuizen, co-founder of Earth observation company Planet Labs, and Glen de Vries, vice chair for life sciences and healthcare at French software company Dassault Systèmes. Shatner and Powers were announced as crewmembers today, while Boshuizen and de Vries were announced on Sept. 27.

Related: Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best

Chris Boshuizen (left) and Glen de Vries (right) are two of the four space tourists scheduled to fly on Blue Origin’s second crewed flight on Oct. 12. 2021 (Image credit: Blue Origin)

The upcoming flight comes less than three months after Blue Origin’s First Human Flight mission, which launched Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark, 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen on a suborbital flight on July 20. That mission set four Guinness World Records for the oldest person to fly in space (Funk), the youngest person to fly in space (Daemen), the first siblings to launch into space together and the first paying passenger to launch into space (Daemen, whose father paid for the trip), according to a GWR statement on Friday (Oct. 1). 

Shatner’s flight follows the 55th anniversary of “Star Trek,” which debuted on TV on Sept. 8, 1966, and on the heels of the actor’s latest album “Bill,” an autobiographical collection of spoken word pieces.

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We’ll be posting updates of Shatner’s launch into space, landing and post-flight celebrations here throughout the mission, so be sure to check back for updates. In the meantime, here’s a recap of Blue Origin’s First Human Flight mission.



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Sports

MLB playoff scenarios: What’s at stake Sunday as Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Mariners fight for wild card

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The final day of the 2021 MLB regular season is here. Well, maybe. It is possible — very possible, in fact — a tiebreaker game or two (or three!) will be required Monday, and tiebreaker games are considered regular-season games. There is a very real chance the regular season will extend into Monday with Game(s) 163.

Eight of the 10 postseason spots are accounted for. The only two open spots are the two American League wild-card spots, though the NL West race is undecided as well. There are six total teams involved in those races and, sadly, none are playing head-to-head this weekend. Everyone has to scoreboard watch, and three of those six clubs need help from other teams.

Here’s a look at everything on the line Sunday, and how the various races can be decided.

Current postseason bracket

Sunday’s relevant games

Remember, all games begin at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday. A few years ago MLB moved all games on the final day to the same start time to maximize drama. It is one of the best things MLB has done in recent years, truly.

NL West

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Giants (106-55) are one game up on the Dodgers (105-56) and will clinch the NL West title with a win over the Padres or a Dodgers loss to the Brewers. Either works. If the Dodgers win and the Giants lose, the two clubs will play a Game 163 tiebreaker in San Francisco on Monday. The winner gets the NL West title and the loser hosts the Cardinals in the Wild Card Game. Got it? Good. Moving on.

AL wild card

This is where the action is. The Blue Jays, Mariners, Red Sox, and Yankees are alive in the American League wild card race, and four teams still alive means there are 16 possible outcomes Sunday, including three- and four-team ties. It could be chaos. Here are all those outcomes:

W

W

W

W

Red Sox

Yankees

W

W

W

L

Red Sox

Yankees

W

W

L

W

Red Sox

Yankees

W

W

L

L

Red Sox

Yankees

W

L

W

W

Yankees

BOS/SEA/TOR tie

W

L

W

L

Yankees

BOS/TOR tie

W

L

L

W

Yankees

BOS/SEA tie

W

L

L

L

Yankees

Red Sox

L

W

W

W

Red Sox

NYY/SEA/TOR tie

L

W

W

L

Red Sox

NYY/TOR tie

L

W

L

W

Red Sox

NYY/SEA tie

L

W

L

L

Red Sox

Yankees

L

L

L

L

Red Sox

Yankees

L

L

W

L

BOS/NYY/TOR tie

L

L

L

W

BOS/NYY/SEA tie

L

L

W

W

BOS/NYY/SEA/TOR tie

Sixteen possible outcomes, seven resulting in Yankees vs. Red Sox in the Wild Card Game, and nine resulting in some sort of tiebreaker scenario. Here’s how all the tiebreakers work. It should be noted three-team ties are a little more chaotic than the big four-team tie. With a four-team tie, the clubs get paired off and play two tiebreaker games, and the winners are the wild card teams. With a three-team tie, there’s a little mini-tournament in which the first tiebreaker game determines who plays in the second tiebreaker game.

Note that the best the Blue Jays and Mariners can do Sunday is force a Game 163 tiebreaker Monday. They can not clinch a wild-card spot outright on the season’s final day. If the AL wild-card race is decided Sunday, it means Yankees vs. Red Sox in the Wild Card Game. Any other scenario involves playing into Monday. 

No. 1 pick in 2022

The race to the bottom is also on the line Sunday. For a while there it looked like the Diamondbacks had the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft locked up, then it looked like the Orioles were going to run away with it, and now it’s down to the last day. The D-Backs (51-110) have a one-game “lead” over the O’s (52-109) and can clinch the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft with a loss to the Rockies or an Orioles win over the Blue Jays on Sunday.

If the Orioles lose and the D-Backs win, they’d finish with identical records, and Baltimore would get the No. 1 pick next year because they had the worse record in 2019 (54-108 to 85-77). The first tiebreaker is 2020 records, but both clubs went 25-35 last year, so we go back to 2019, and the O’s hold that tiebreaker. Outfielder Elijah Green, a possible generational talent, is the early favorite to be the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft.

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Business

‘Turmoil’ at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin: report

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Former NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson on Jeff Bezos’ first crewed Blue Origin flight.

There is trouble at Blue Origin, according to a new report claiming Jeff Bezos’ aerospace venture is experiencing a “talent exodus,” purportedly due in part to actions by CEO Bob Smith.

The allegations came the day after a group of former Blue Origin employees wrote an open essay slamming what they called a “toxic” culture at the company.

Photo credit: Getty Images / Blue Origin (Getty Images / Blue Origin)

BLUE ORIGIN UNVEILS DATE, FIRST TWO CREW MEMBERS FOR OCTOBER SUBORBITAL SPACEFLIGHT

Attrition at Blue Origin has surpassed 20% this year, with many blaming Smith’s push to get all the company’s employees back into the office, multiple people familiar with the situation told CNBC. 

But Blue Origin dismissed the claims, with a spokesperson telling the outlet that attrition “has never exceeded 12.7%” on an annualized rate. The spokesperson also waived off allegations that anything unusual was going on at cmpany.

“We are seeing attrition rates comparable to those reported by other companies as part of what many are calling ‘The Great Resignation,’” the spokesperson said.

A letter posted by 21 former Blue Origin employees on Thursday claimed the workplace culture at Blue Origin has “taken a toll on the mental health of many of the people who make Blue Origin’s operations possible.”

The first human crew of a Blue Origin flight holds the Explorer’s Club flag (AP Newsroom)

The memo went on to say that some employees were “terrified of the potential consequences for speaking out against the wealthiest man on the planet” and others “have experienced periods of suicidal thoughts after having their passion for space manipulated in such a toxic environment.”

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

In response to the letter, a Blue Origin spokesperson told FOX Business, “We provide numerous avenues for employees, including a 24/7 anonymous hotline, and will promptly investigate any new claims of misconduct.”

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Sports

AL wild-card race: Red Sox, Blue Jays collect critical wins; Mariners also in action

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Entering Wednesday’s slate of games, the American League wild card picture remained in flux. The New York Yankees continued their series against the Toronto Blue Jays with a two-game lead for the top spot. The Boston Red Sox, meanwhile, were attempting to fend off the Seattle Mariners (just a half-game back) and end a four-game losing streak against the Baltimore Orioles. The Oakland Athletics, still theoretically alive, had their own reasons for trying to upend the Mariners’ recent run.

How did the night’s action play out? Below you can find all you need to know, as well as relive CBS Sports’ live blog coverage throughout the night.

AL wild-card standings

1. Yankees — 90-68 (+1 G)
2. Red Sox — 89-69
—————————
3. Mariners — 88-70 (1/2 GB) (still to play on Wednesday)
4. Blue Jays — 88-70 (1 GB)
5. Athletics — 85-73 (3 1/2 GB) (still to play on Wednesday)

Blue Jays slug their way to victory

On paper, Wednesday night’s pitching matchup between Gerrit Cole and José Berríos seemed primed to be a low-scoring affair. In practice, it was not. Rather, the Blue Jays’ ever-threatening lineup put on a show as part of a 6-5 victory (box score).

George Springer led off the bottom of the first with a double and the Blue Jays were off and slugging from there. In total, Toronto recorded eight extra-base hits. Bo Bichette was responsible for three of them, doubling and delivering his 27th and 28th home runs of the season. Marcus Semien also homered, setting a record for second basemen with 44 dingers on the year. Springer, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Santiago Espinal provided the other extra-base knocks, all of the doubles variety.

In addition to Semien’s record, the Blue Jays lineup made history of its own. Toronto became the first team since the 2003 Braves to see four players clear the 100-runs batted in mark, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Those four? Teoscar Hernández, Guerrero, Semien, and Bichette.

The win puts the Blue Jays just two games back of the Yankees for the top wild card spot with Thursday’s series finale to go. The Blue Jays did appear likely to gain ground on the Red Sox, however, meaning they’ll remain a game outside of the playoff picture with just four days remaining in the regular season. 

Red Sox down Orioles, maintain wild card lead 

The Red Sox faced a straightforward situation entering Wednesday’s contest against the Orioles: a loss plus a Mariners win would leave them outside of the playoff picture with just days to go in the regular season. That’s because the Red Sox, losers of four in a row, had seen their lead for the second wild card spot reduced to a half game.

Thanks to J.D. Martinez, the Red Sox needn’t worry about the possibility for a little longer.

Martinez put Boston on the board early with a solo home run, his 28th of the campaign. Later, he plated a pair of runs with a double to give the Red Sox a 3-0 lead. Martinez has now driven in 99 runs on the year, positioning him for fifth career 100-RBI season. Alex Verdugo added two runs of his own in the eighth before Hunter Renfroe homered in the ninth to give Boston an insurmountable 6-0 lead (box score).

The Yankees loss means the Red Sox are now just one game behind the Yankees for the top wild card spot.

The Red Sox will wrap up their series against the Orioles on Thursday before traversing to D.C. for a three-game, season-ending series against the Nationals. 

Follow along below for live updates, scores, highlights and analysis from Wednesday night in the AL wild-card race.

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Joey Gallo hit by pitch against Toronto Blue Jays; New York Yankees await results of X-rays

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New York Yankees slugger Joey Gallo is set to undergo X-rays after he was hit by a pitch in the left hand/forearm area in Wednesday night’s 6-5 loss to the Blue Jays in Toronto.

Gallo was unable to bat in the ninth inning after being hit by a Tim Mayza pitch in the seventh.

“He’s getting X-rays on everything, and we’ll see what we have when we get that,” manager Aaron Boone said. “He couldn’t hit, and we took him out of the game, so we’ll see what we have now that we’ll have X-rays, and we’ll see what happens overnight.”

Boone also said Luke Voit was getting treatment after tweaking his knee but expects him to be OK. Voit appeared to hurt himself running to first after striking out later in the inning.

Voit had been dealing with a left knee bone bruise.

“On his knee, that bugs him sometimes, he just got slammed on it,” Boone said. “Hopefully, he should be OK. He gets that sometimes. Tonight, when he stopped, he got bit on it a bit. He got some treatment, and we’ll see what we have tomorrow. I’m hoping he’s OK.”

Boston, which beat Baltimore, closed within one game of the wild-card-leading Yankees, and Toronto is one game back of the Red Sox. Seattle, which began the day 2½ games behind the Yankees, hosted Oakland in a late game.

Information from ESPN’s Marly Rivera was used in this report.

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