AFP UK

A French court on Thursday ordered the government to make up for its failure to meet its own greenhouse gas reduction targets, saying it needed to “repair” the emissions overshoots.

Four NGOs backed by a petition carrying 2.3 million signatures took the French state to court in 2019 in what they called “the case of the century”, asking the judges to rule on the government’s alleged climate target shortcomings between 2015 and 2018.

The Paris administrative court found that France emitted 15 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent beyond its targets over that period.

It ordered Prime Minister Jean Castex and his government to take measures “to repair the damage” caused by the failure to compensate for the excess emissions.

The court gave a deadline of December 31, 2022, to set things right, leaving the methods to achieve this up to the government.

The court had already accepted the plaintiffs’ reasoning in February, ruling that France had failed to respect its own “carbon budget” based on the COP 21 UN climate accord signed in Paris in December 2015.

But on Thursday it added a provision that failure to meet the deadline would result in 78 million euros ($91 million) in penalties every six months until the target was fully achieved.

“We won,” tweeted both Cecile Duflot — a former government minister and now head of Oxfam France — and Greenpeace France boss Jean-Francois Julliard.

“The government is now forced to keep France’s climate promises,” said Notre Affaire a Tous, a third plaintiff that fights against environmental protection violations through court action.

The fourth plaintiff, Fondation Nicolas Hulot, created by President Emmanuel Macron’s former environment minister, said: “France has been sentenced to repair the consequences of its climate inaction.”

The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions putting pressure on France to meet its own environmental targets.

In July, France’s highest administrative court, the Council of State, ordered the government to take measures by March 31, 2022, to honour its commitments in terms of greenhouse gas reductions.

France has committed to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels, and to reaching carbon neutrality by 2050.

The 2015 Paris agreement, a binding treaty, called for a limit on global warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial levels, and “preferably” 1.5C degrees.

Based on progress so far, experts say the world is currently unlikely to meet either target, instead heading for close to 3C degrees.

China will send three astronauts to its new space station this week, officials confirmed Thursday, in what will be Beijing’s longest crewed mission to date.

The three will blast off at 12:23 a.m. on Saturday from the launch centre in northwestern China’s Gobi desert, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said at a press conference Thursday.

They will spend six months at the Tiangong space station’s core module, Tianhe.

Their mission — twice as long as its record-holding predecessor — aims to test “critical technologies” for assembling Tiangong, CMSA deputy director Lin Xiqiang said.

The mission will also include “two to three” spacewalks to install components needed for future construction work, Lin said.

The three “taikonauts” — as China calls its astronauts — include commander Zhai Zhigang, 55, a former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter pilot who in 2008 performed the first spacewalk by a Chinese astronaut.

Zhai said the main challenges for the astronauts will include “more complex” spacewalks than previous missions and the extra physical and mental pressure of living in space for a longer period.

But the crew “had the confidence and ability” to achieve their objectives and “live up to the great trust placed in us by the motherland and the people,” he added at a separate press conference Thursday.

Another crew member, Wang Yaping, 41, will become the first woman astronaut to visit the nation’s space station. 

She previously became China’s second woman in space in 2013.

The other team member is former PLA pilot Ye Guangfu, 41.

The trio were previously the backup crew for the successful Shenzhou-12 mission that concluded last month when the astronauts returned safely to Earth in a landing capsule.

The astronauts spent three months on the Tiangong station, which has separate living modules for each of them as well as a shared bathroom, dining area, and a communication centre to send emails and allow video calls with ground control.

The Long March-2F rocket that will carry the Shenzhou-13 spacecraft into space was moved to the launch pad last Thursday, Chinese state media reported.

It is currently taking on propellant before Saturday’s launch, Lin said.

China’s heavily promoted space programme has already seen the country land a rover on Mars and send probes to the moon.

Beijing’s desire for a human outpost of its own in Earth’s orbit was fuelled by a US ban on its astronauts on the International Space Station.

Britain’s Prince William has launched an attack on space tourism, urging more attention on problems closer to home ahead of the COP26 climate summit.

The comments by Queen Elizabeth II’s grandson were airing in a BBC interview later Thursday, a day after “Star Trek” star William Shatner became a real space traveller on Blue Origin’s second crewed mission.

The mission replayed the company’s maiden human flight in July, which included its founder Jeff Bezos of Amazon and was seen as a breakthrough for the emerging space tourism sector.

But Prince William said: “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.” 

Virgin Galactic, which offers a similar experience of a few minutes’ weightlessness and a view of the Earth’s curvature from the cosmos, launched its founder Richard Branson in July, a few days before Bezos.

William was speaking ahead of the inaugural Earthshot Prize awards ceremony on Sunday, his initiative to honour those working on environmental solutions. 

Looking ahead to the COP26 summit in Glasgow, which begins on October 31, he warned world leaders against “clever speak, clever words, but not enough action”.

– ‘Ahead of the curve’ –

“It would be an absolute disaster if (son) George is sat here talking to you… in like 30 years’ time, still saying the same thing, because by then we will be too late.”

William’s father Prince Charles, a lifelong environmentalist, has also spoken out on the need for action from the leaders rather than words in the buildup to the UN climate summit.

“He’s had a really rough ride on that, and I think you know he’s been proven to being well ahead of the curve, well beyond his time in warning about some of these dangers,” William said.

“But it shouldn’t be that there’s a third generation now coming along having to ramp it up even more.”

Queen Elizabeth, Charles and William are all due to attend events at the two-week summit.

The gathering will try to persuade major developing economies to do more to cut their carbon emissions, and get the rich world to cough up billions more to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.

“I want the things that I’ve enjoyed -– the outdoor life, nature, the environment -– I want that to be there for my children, and not just my children but everyone else’s children,” William said.

“If we’re not careful we’re robbing from our children’s future through what we do now. And I think that’s not fair.”

Britain’s Prince William on Thursday praised his father Charles for being “well ahead of the curve” on climate change, as the pair ramped up pressure ahead of the upcoming COP26 summit in Glasgow.

“He’s had a really rough ride on that, and I think you know he’s been proven to being well ahead of the curve, well beyond his time in warning about some of these dangers,” William told the BBC.

“But it shouldn’t be that there’s a third generation now coming along having to ramp it up even more,” he added.

“It would be an absolute disaster if (my son) George is sat here talking to you… in like 30 years’ time, still saying the same thing, because by then we will be too late.”

The prince spoke to the BBC ahead of the inaugural Earthshot Prize awards ceremony on Sunday, his initiative to honour those working on environmental solutions. 

Looking ahead to the COP26 summit in Glasgow, which begins on October 31, William warned world leaders against “clever speak, clever words, but not enough action”.

“I want the things that I’ve enjoyed –- the outdoor life, nature, the environment –- I want that to be there for my children, and not just my children but everyone else’s children,” he said. 

“If we’re not careful we’re robbing from our children’s future through what we do now.”

Lifelong environmentalist Charles weighed in himself on Monday, saying that he was worried that world leaders would “just talk”.

Queen Elizabeth II’s eldest son and heir, 72, is due to attend events at the two-week summit along with his 95-year-old mother.

The UN summit will try to persuade major developing economies to do more to cut their carbon emissions, and get the rich world to cough up billions more dollars to help poorer countries adapt to climate change.

“The risks now are so great if you don’t make the right move. It’ll be catastrophic,” said Charles. 

“It is already beginning to be catastrophic, because nothing in nature can survive the stress that is created by these extremes of weather,” he added.

Charles, whose Highgrove estate in western England has an entirely organic garden and farm, also outlined some of his own actions to reduce his carbon footprint, including cutting down on meat and fish.

In 2008, his office revealed he had converted an Aston Martin car he owns to run on biofuel made from surplus English white wine and whey from cheese manufacturing.

The death toll from a storm that triggered landslides and flash floods across the Philippines has risen to at least 19, authorities said Thursday, linking the extreme rainfall to climate change.

Severe Tropical Storm Kompasu dumped more than a month’s worth of rain in two days as it swept across the archipelago nation this week, national disaster agency spokesman Mark Timbal told AFP.

Kompasu — named after the Japanese pronunciation of “compass” — intensified the southwest monsoon that had already saturated swathes of the disaster-prone country.

Provinces on the most populous island of Luzon were hardest hit by the storm, which caused more than a billion pesos ($20 million) worth of damage to the agriculture sector and damaged hundreds of homes.

Timbal said the rainfall was “even greater than the Ondoy experience”, referring to the devastating Typhoon Ketsana, known in the Philippines as Tropical Storm Ondoy, that hit in 2009 and claimed hundreds of lives.

“This only proves the effect of climate change when it comes to the increasing magnitude of these natural hazards,” Timbal said.

“This continues to pose a challenge to our disaster management system — we always have to step up our preparations in view of the worst-case scenario for every natural hazard.”

Because a warmer atmosphere holds more water, climate change increases the risk and intensity of flooding from extreme rainfall.

Nineteen deaths have been confirmed so far, the majority in the northwestern province of Ilocos Sur where most of the victims were caught in flash floods.

The disaster agency is also checking another 11 reported fatalities, mostly in the landlocked mountainous province of Benguet.

A total of 14 people have been reported missing.

Timbal said the “changing nature” of the hazards had made it difficult to achieve their target of zero casualties. 

“Each hazard is unique to the next one,” he said.

“It’s a new normal caused by climate change.”

Timbal added that nearly 15,000 people fled their homes, but only about half stayed in evacuation centres. The rest sought shelter with friends or relatives due to fears of catching the coronavirus.

The storm moved across the South China Sea on Tuesday towards Hong Kong, forcing the international business hub to batten down.

The Philippines — ranked as one of the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of a warming planet — is hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons every year, which typically wipe out harvests, homes and infrastructure in already impoverished areas.

“Star Trek” actor William Shatner finally became a real space traveler on Blue Origin’s second crewed mission Wednesday, calling it the most profound experience of his life.

“It was unbelievable,” said the 90-year-old Canadian, known to the sci-fi show’s legion of “Trekkies” as the daring Captain James T. Kirk, a role he first played more than half a century ago.

He was joined on the 11-minute journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere and back again by three others: Blue Origin executive Audrey Powers, Planet Labs co-founder Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries of Medidata Solutions.

A New Shepard rocket took off from the company’s West Texas base around 9:49 am (1449 GMT) after experiencing two brief delays, eventually soaring to 66 miles (106 kilometers) above sea level.

Founder Jeff Bezos was on hand to greet the crew members as they climbed out of the capsule, which parachute-landed in desert, and were showered with applause and champagne.

Like the almost 600 astronauts who have gone before him, Shatner marveled at the experience of weightlessness and the stunning view of our world from space.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened,” he said, moved to tears.

“What you’re looking down on is Mother Earth, and it needs protecting,” he later told reporters. 

The mission was a replay of the company’s maiden human flight in July, which included Bezos and was seen as a breakthrough moment for the nascent space tourism sector.

This time around, all attention was focused on Shatner, who became the oldest-ever astronaut, despite an appearance suggesting a man decades younger.

The intergalactic voyages of the USS Enterprise, commanded by Shatner’s character Kirk, helped turn American attention to the stars as the US space program was starting out.

“Captain Kirk… represents ‘the final frontier’ perhaps more than anyone else for a couple different generations of people, in the US and worldwide,” screenwriter and Trek historian Marc Cushman told AFP.

Shatner, also known for his role as lawyer Denny Crane in “Boston Legal,” among many others, has spoken in the past about an at-times difficult relationship with Star Trek and its fan culture.

But in recent years, the actor has leaned into the fame brought about by his most famous role. 

“I’m overwhelmed by the response,” said Shatner, when asked by AFP about the outpouring of support he has received from fans and the wider space community since the mission was announced.

– Space tourism heating up –

For Blue Origin, meanwhile, a second mission in less than three months represents another step forward as it tries to establish itself as space tourism’s leading player.

Boshuizen and Vries brought the company’s total number of paying customers to three, after Dutch teen Oliver Daemen who was on board the first flight.

Competition in the sector is heating up.

Virgin Galactic, which offers a similar experience of a few minutes’ weightlessness and a view of the Earth’s curvature from the cosmos, launched its founder Richard Branson in July, a few days before Bezos.

And in September, SpaceX sent four private citizens on a three-day trip whizzing around the planet — an altogether more ambitious, but also likely far more expensive endeavor.

For many space enthusiasts, Shatner’s voyage was a fitting coda for a pop culture phenomenon that inspired generations of astronauts, scientists and engineers.

The show has had a long-running association with NASA, whose scientists were sent early scripts to vet their accuracy, according to Cushman.

“Those scientists, as well as nearly everyone at those space agencies, were avid Star Trek watchers, and they well understood that the popularity of the series helped spark growing interest and funding for the space program,” he said.

Another mega-fan: Bezos himself.

The Amazon founder shared an Instagram post of Star Trek artwork he made when he was nine years old.

Bezos has said Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant was inspired by the conversational computer on the Enterprise, and he even made a cameo as an alien in the 2016 film “Star Trek Beyond,” sporting an egg-shaped head.

Black ticks on their foreheads marking the eye to be operated on, dozens of patients in green overalls wait in line, beneficiaries of a pioneering Indian model that is restoring sight to millions. 

With a highly efficient assembly line model inspired by McDonald’s, the network of hospitals of the Aravind Eye Care System performs around 500,000 surgeries a year — many for free.

More than a quarter of the world’s population, some 2.2 billion people, suffer from vision impairment.  Of which one billion cases could have been prevented or have been left unaddressed, according to the World Vision Report by the World Health Organization.

There are an estimated 10 million blind people in India, with a further 50 million suffering from some form of visual impairment. Cataracts — clouding of the eye lens — is the main cause. 

“The bulk of this blindness is not necessary because a lot of it is due to cataract which can be easily set right through a simple surgery,” said Thulasiraj Ravilla, one of the founding members of Aravind.

The hospital was set up by doctor Govindappa Venkataswamy who was inspired by McDonald’s ex-CEO Roy Kroc and learned about the fast-food chain’s economies of scale during a visit to the Hamburger University in Chicago.

“If McDonald’s can do it for hamburgers, why can’t we do it for eye care?” he famously said.

Aravind started as an 11-bed facility in 1976 in Madurai, a city in the southern state of Tamil Nadu but has expanded to care centres and community clinics across India. 

– Grit and gratitude –

The model has been so successful it has been the subject of numerous studies including by Harvard Business School. 

But it is the outreach camps which have been the cornerstone of its no-frills high-volume work — nearly 70 percent of India’s population lives in rural areas. 

“It is the access that is the main concern, so we are taking the treatment to people rather than waiting for them to come for us,” Ravilla told AFP.

The free eye camps are a boon for those like Venkatachalam Rajangam who received care close to home.

Rajangam said he had to stop working because he was unable to see the money customers at his provisions store gave him, and also stumbled on the stairs or when out after dark. 

The 64-year-old found out about a camp next to his village in Kadukarai, some 240 kilometres (150 miles) from Madurai, where doctors screened his eyes and detected a cataract in the left one. 

Rajangam was taken in a bus with some 100 others to a shelter run by the hospital, which also provides basic meals and mats to sleep on free of charge, and underwent a procedure to remove the cataract. 

“I thought the operation would be for an hour but within 15 minutes everything was over. But it didn’t feel rushed. The procedure was done properly,” Rajangam said after the bandage roll covering his eye was removed.

“I didn’t have to spend even a penny… God has created eyes, but they are the ones who restored my eyesight,” he gushed, clasping his hands in gratitude.

– ‘Practice on goat eyeballs’ –

Aravind eye surgeon Aruna Pai said the doctors receive rigorous training to make sure they can perform surgeries quickly.

The complication rate is less than two per 10,000 at Aravind compared to Britain or the United States where it ranges from 4-8 per 10,000, according to the hospital.  

“We have wet labs where we are taught to operate on goats’ eyeballs. This helps us to sharpen our skills,” said Pai, who performs some 100 surgeries in a day.

Aravind said it does not take charity money but instead uses the revenue generated from paying customers to help cover the cost of those who need free treatment.

It reduces costs further by manufacturing lenses for cataract treatment at its own facility called Aurolab.

Aurolab currently produces more than 2.5 million of these lenses a year at a sixth of the cost of those previously imported from the US, the hospital said. 

Rajib Dasgupta, a community health expert based in New Delhi, lauded the clinics: “The Aravind model has emerged as an important one in blindness prevention.”

But he warned that India still needed to look at root causes — including diet, hygiene, and sanitation — that could help avoid preventable blindness. 

Dasgupta warned: “The communicable causes of blindness due to infectious conditions still exist and remain significant challenges.”

— This story is being published to coincide with World Sight Day — 

Marc Van Ranst, a virologist famous in Belgium for providing expertise about the Covid-19 pandemic, was at home for his first afternoon off in months in May, unaware that his life was under threat and that he would soon be forced to go into hiding.

Jurgen Conings, a soldier aligned with right-wing extremist movements who had stated his intent to harm Van Ranst was sitting in a car nearby armed with four rocket launchers. 

It wasn’t until the following day Van Ranst learned he was in danger.

“They called me at noon and half an hour later they came with heavily armoured cars,” Van Ranst told AFP. 

“They took my son from school and my wife from the hospital and me… to a safe house. We were in several safe houses over the course of about a month.”

Van Ranst has given hundreds of interviews on Covid-19 since the pandemic began and says he has a file of over 150 threats related to his pandemic expertise.

“Some are minor — they compare you to Hitler or Mengele,” he said. “And then some are death threats.” 

He is one of dozens of scientists harassed over the pandemic, according to a survey by scientific journal Nature.

Of 321 experts who responded to the journal, 81 percent reported some experience of “trolling or personal attacks after speaking about Covid-19 in the media”.

Fifteen percent reported receiving death threats and over half had their credibility attacked.

– ‘They find different ways’ –

In its article on the survey, Nature said it reached out to scientists in the US, the UK, Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, New Zealand and Germany who had given interviews about the pandemic. 

The prestigious journal acknowledges that harassment of scientists speaking on hot-button issues such as gun violence, vaccines and climate change is not new.

But they say even experts who were already prominent noted a rise in abuse related to the pandemic. The survey’s respondents described threats by email, online comments, phone calls and more.

French virologist Karine Lacombe rose to prominence during the pandemic for her expertise lent during regular television and radio appearances and in articles. 

She told AFP that attacks on her — largely driven by French right-wing media supportive of controversial doctor Didier Raoult — began in earnest once she spoke out publicly against Raoult’s advice to use hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid.

She describes being insulted in the street, getting anonymous letters threatening rape, and having her inbox flooded with disparaging personal messages.

“It was totally new to me and extremely violent,” she told AFP.

She left Twitter and even spent several days with friends, imagining people might be waiting for her in front of her home.

“I had a kind of breakdown,” she said.

Both Lacombe and Van Ranst report being targeted by right-wing extremists in their countries, which are often aligned against pandemic measures and vaccines.

Van Ranst describes being repeatedly summoned to Belgian court by anti-vaxers.

“They find different ways of harassing us,” Van Ranst said.

He says he makes a point of defending himself at the mandatory court appearances and that he has never lost — but fighting the suits has taken over 400 hours of his time.

“They’re not keeping me from my job but I have literally no free time,” he said, “This is the third one and they said they would keep doing it.”

– ‘They want to silence us’ –

Nature describes a “chilling effect”, with experts who experienced the most harassment also reporting the biggest influence on their willingness to speak to the media.

While Lacombe says she has heard similar feedback from colleagues, that it is not the case for her.

For with support from psychologists and groups fighting bullying and disinformation online, she says she was able to return to Twitter after a month and a half.

“It has reinforced my convictions,” she said.

“They want to silence us, we who have the knowledge and expertise. I’m trying not to give in.”

Van Ranst feels the same.

“I’m not more careful,” he said, “I’m equally outspoken against anti-vaccination messages or fake news or whatever.

“Otherwise they win.”

It’s no secret that beer and cheese go hand in hand — but a new study reveals how deep their roots run in Europe, where workers at a salt mine in Austria were gorging on both up to 2,700 years ago.

Scientists made the discovery by analyzing samples of human excrement found at the heart of the Hallstatt mine in the Austrian Alps. The study was published in the journal Current Biology on Wednesday.

Frank Maixner, a microbiologist at the Eurac Research Institute in Bolzano, Italy, who was the lead author of the report, said he was surprised to learn that salt miners more than two millennia ago were advanced enough to “use fermentation intentionally.”

“This is very sophisticated in my opinion,” Maixner told AFP. “This is something I did not expect at that time.”

The finding was the earliest evidence to date of cheese ripening in Europe, according to researchers.

And while alcohol consumption is certainly well documented in older writings and archaeological evidence, the salt miners’ feces contained the first molecular evidence of beer consumption on the continent at that time.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history,” said Kerstin Kowarik of the Museum of Natural History Vienna.

– ‘A very particular place’ –

The town of Hallstatt, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been used for salt production for more than 3,000 years. 

The community “is a very particular place, it’s located in the Alps, in the middle of nowhere,” he explained. “The whole community worked and lived from this mine.”

The miners spent their entire days there, working, eating and going to the bathroom in the mine.

It is thanks to the constant temperature of around 8C (46F) and the high concentration of salt at the mine that the miners’ feces were preserved particularly well. 

Researchers analyzed four samples: one dating back to the Bronze Age, two from the Iron Age and one from the 18th century.

One of them, about 2,700 years old, was found to contain two fungi, Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both are known today for their use in food making.

“The Hallstatt miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry,” Maixner said.

– A balanced diet –

The researchers also studied the miners’ diet, which consisted mainly of cereals, some fruit, and beans and meats as the source of protein.

“The diet was exactly what these miners needed, in my opinion,” Maixner said. “It’s clearly balanced and you have all major components you need.”

The main difference with today’s menus is the degree of food processing, which was very low at the time. The Bronze and Iron Age miners used whole grains, suggesting the consumption of some kind of porridge. For the 18th-century miners, the grains appeared ground, indicating they ate bread or cookies.

One of the study’s other findings was the composition of the miners’ microbiota, or the set of bacteria present in their bodies.

In the four samples studied, the microbiota were very similar to that of modern non-Western populations, which tend to have a more traditional lifestyle.

This suggests a “recent shift” in the microbiota of industrialized humans, “probably due to modern lifestyle, diet, or medical advances,” the study said.

However, microbiota are often linked to different modern diseases, Maixner said. According to him, determining when exactly this change occurred could help scientists understand what caused it.

“Star Trek” actor William Shatner finally became a real space traveler on Blue Origin’s second crewed mission Wednesday, calling it the most profound experience of his life.

“It was unbelievable,” said the 90-year-old Canadian, known to the sci-fi show’s legion of “Trekkies” as the daring Captain James T. Kirk, a role he first played more than half a century ago.

He was joined on the 11-minute journey beyond Earth’s atmosphere and back again by three others: Blue Origin executive Audrey Powers, Planet Labs co-founder Chris Boshuizen, and Glen de Vries of Medidata Solutions.

A New Shepard rocket took off from the company’s West Texas base around 9:49 am (1449 GMT) after experiencing two brief delays, eventually soaring to 66 miles (106 kilometers) above sea level.

Founder Jeff Bezos was on hand to greet the crew members as they climbed out of the capsule, which parachute-landed in desert, and were showered with applause and champagne.

Like the almost 600 astronauts who have gone before him, Shatner marveled at the experience of weightlessness and the stunning view of our world from space.

“What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened,” he said, moved to tears.

“What you’re looking down on is Mother Earth, and it needs protecting,” he later told reporters. 

The mission was a replay of the company’s maiden human flight in July, which included Bezos and was seen as a breakthrough moment for the nascent space tourism sector.

This time around, all attention was focused on Shatner, who became the oldest-ever astronaut, despite an appearance suggesting a man decades younger.

The intergalactic voyages of the USS Enterprise, commanded by Shatner’s character Kirk, helped turn American attention to the stars as the US space program was starting out.

“Captain Kirk… represents ‘the final frontier’ perhaps more than anyone else for a couple different generations of people, in the US and worldwide,” screenwriter and Trek historian Marc Cushman told AFP.

Shatner, also known for his role as lawyer Denny Crane in “Boston Legal,” among many others, has spoken in the past about an at-times difficult relationship with Star Trek and its fan culture.

But in recent years, the actor has leaned into the fame brought about by his most famous role. 

“I’m overwhelmed by the response,” said Shatner, when asked by AFP about the outpouring of support he has received from fans and the wider space community since the mission was announced.

– Space tourism heating up –

For Blue Origin, meanwhile, a second mission in less than three months represents another step forward as it tries to establish itself as space tourism’s leading player.

Boshuizen and Vries brought the company’s total number of paying customers to three, after Dutch teen Oliver Daemen who was on board the first flight.

Competition in the sector is heating up.

Virgin Galactic, which offers a similar experience of a few minutes’ weightlessness and a view of the Earth’s curvature from the cosmos, launched its founder Richard Branson in July, a few days before Bezos.

And in September, SpaceX sent four private citizens on a three-day trip whizzing around the planet — an altogether more ambitious, but also likely far more expensive endeavor.

For many space enthusiasts, Shatner’s voyage was a fitting coda for a pop culture phenomenon that inspired generations of astronauts, scientists and engineers.

The show has had a long-running association with NASA, whose scientists were sent early scripts to vet their accuracy, according to Cushman.

“Those scientists, as well as nearly everyone at those space agencies, were avid Star Trek watchers, and they well understood that the popularity of the series helped spark growing interest and funding for the space program,” he said.

Another mega-fan: Bezos himself.

The Amazon founder shared an Instagram post of Star Trek artwork he made when he was nine years old.

Bezos has said Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant was inspired by the conversational computer on the Enterprise, and he even made a cameo as an alien in the 2016 film “Star Trek Beyond,” sporting an egg-shaped head.