Actor visits space: ‘I hope I never recover’

The Canadian – who will forever be known to the sci-fi show’s legion of Trekkies as Captain James Tiberius Kirk – took off on his space voyage just before 2am AEDT.Shatner called the experience one of “the most profound and humbling” of his life.“I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it,” he said. “I am so filled with emotion with what just happened.”He was joined on the New Shepard rocket by Blue Origin executive Audrey Powers, Planet Labs co-founder Australian Chris Boshuizen, and Glen De Vries, a co-founder of clinical research platform Medidata Solutions.Dr Boshuizen, told 7NEWS he was a “space dork” who spent “a lot of money” to get on the flight.“I wasn’t necessarily happy about the price,” he told 7NEWS.The former NASA developer and satellite entrepreneur is the third Australian to visit space.The crew’s roughly 11-minute hop beyond the Karman Line – 100 kilometres into the air, just beyond Earth’s atmosphere – and back down again with a parachute landing in the desert is a replay of Blue’s maiden human flight in July.That trip, which included company owner Jeff Bezos of Amazon, was seen as a breakthrough moment for the nascent space tourism sector.