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Before Katy Perry and Lauren Sanchez, the first celeb to go to space was a 90-year-old TV star, hated his trip
Years before Katy Perry boarded a Blue Origin rocket to go to space, a 90-year-old acting legend had beaten her to it.
Earlier this week, pop star Katy Perry joined TV presenter Gayle King and four other women on a trip to space as part of an all-women crew on one of billionaire Jeff Bezos's rockets. The six astronauts lofted more than 60 miles (100 kilometres) above the Earth's surface in a vessel from Blue Origin, the space company owned by the Amazon founder. And while Katy Perry's trip to space may have been more publicised, she was not the first celeb to do so. That honour rests with an acting legend who beat the Firework singer by four years. But unlike Katy, he did not seem to have a gala time up there.
The first celeb to go to space
William Shatner, iconic TV actor best known as Star Trek's Captain Kirk, became the first celebrity to go into space back in 2021. The then 90-year-old flew aboard a Blue Origins rocket free of cost. The sub-orbital human spaceflight included three other astronauts. At 90 years and 205 days, Shatner became the oldest person to go to space, surpassing Wally Funk, who had flown on Blue Origin's first crewed spaceflight at the age of 82 in July 2021. His record was later broken by retired U.S. Air Force pilot Ed Dwight.
Upon return to Earth, Shatner wrote about his experience in a piece for Variety, where he categorically stated he was less than thrilled about the experience. "I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film 'Contact,' when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, 'They should’ve sent a poet.' I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound," he wrote.
Shatner added that the trip felt like a 'funeral', giving him strong grief. "It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral," the piece further read.
More about Katy Perry's trip to space
Katy Perry and Gayle King were accompanied by Bezos's fiancée Lauren Sanchez, along with Kerianne Flynn — a producer — Aisha Bowe — a former NASA scientist and chief executive officer of STEMBoard — and Amanda Nguyen — a bioastronautics research scientist and advocate for survivors of sexual violence. The flight brought the passengers beyond the Karman line -- the internationally recognized boundary of space. King later said Perry sang What a wonderful world in space. The singer infamously kissed the ground upon her return from the hour-long trip.
