STAR TREK WILLIAM SHATNER GOING TO SPACE

His ship is no longer called USS Enterprise, but New Shepard. William Shatner, the iconic Captain Kirk from the Star Trek series, will travel to space thanks to the company Blue Origin.

The mission will launch on October 12 from Texas. At 90, William Shatner will make a fifteen minute flight to spend a few moments above the Karman Line, which sets the limit between Earth's atmosphere and space. He will be able to unbuckle his belt and float in zero gravity.

"Now I can say it!", Rejoiced the Canadian actor on Twitter. "Yes, that's right, I'm a space man!"

William Shatner will not go alone. He will be joined by Audrey Powers, mission vice president of Blue Origin, Chris Boshuizen, former NASA engineer, and Glen de Vries, co-founder of Medidata Solutions.

THREE MONTHS AFTER JEFF BEZOS'S FLIGHT

This mission comes three months after the first manned flight of Blue Origin, a space tourism company founded by Jeff Bezos. The richest man in the world and creator of Amazon himself took part. He had taken three people with him, including Wally Funk, an 82-year-old former test pilot. She was - until William Shatner's announcement - the oldest person to ever travel to space.

But the enthusiasm of the Star Trek hero does not erase the controversies facing Blue Origin. Employees accuse the company of maintaining a "toxic" work environment, between lack of personnel, resources, and extreme pressure to reduce costs and deadlines.

Especially since at a time when global warming is a major concern, the very principle of space tourism raises questions. If Blue Origin boasts of using a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen to propel its rockets, and therefore of not producing CO2, many researchers question this claim.