Spaceflight companies set limit on carry-ons: souvenirs not for sale
[ad_1]
Captain Kirk may have bucked the rules while helming the Starship Enterprise, but when it comes to flying in space for real, William Shatner is apparently abiding by the terms set forth by Blue Origin.
The “Star Trek” actor-turned-soon-to-be-astronaut revealed one of the company’s lesser-known restrictions while discussing the personal items he was packing for his New Shepard rocket ride this week.
“They’ve allowed me to take a little blue bag full of mementos, so I’ve got family and friends collecting little mementos so I can bring [them] up,” Shatner said in an interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. He then quickly added, “you can’t sell it.”
“You can’t monetize it,” said Shatner, of the kit’s contents. “No, this is for your little purposes.”
Live updates: Follow William Shatner’s Blue Origin launch here
The rule — which might dash the hopes of some Star Trek fans thinking they could someday buy something that flew with Shatner into space — is not unique to the actor. It applies to all of Blue Origin‘s passengers, including Shatner’s three NS-18 crewmates: Chris Boshuizen of Planet Labs, Glen de Vries with Dassault Systems and Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s head of mission operations.
“Our terms prohibit people from selling anything they fly on board with them,” said a Blue Origin spokesperson in response to an inquiry by collectSPACE.com. “The terms prohibiting this are included in one of the documents astronauts are required to sign before they fly on New Shepard.”
Related: Star Trek movies, ranked worst to best
Commercial space, minus the commercial
Blue Origin, which was founded by former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, would not go into further detail as to its ban on clients selling their space souvenirs.
“The terms of our launch services contract are confidential,” explained Sara Blask, senior manager for public relations at Blue Origin.
Virgin Galactic, billionaire Richard Branson’s commercial spaceflight company and a competitor to Blue Origin, has a similar policy for passengers launching items on its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane.
“We will allow our ‘Future Astronauts’ to take up personal mementos, but of course need to make sure these fit with our safety regulations and commercial principles. They need to be small enough to fit in the pockets of the flight suit, pass our technical requirements and not conflict with our brand,” wrote Clare Pelly, head of the astronaut office at Virgin Galactic, in an email to collectSPACE.
Photos and other items of a personal nature should be fine, according to Pelly, and they can be shared with the passenger’s friends, family and community as desired. But the company will prohibit items that can be commoditized.
“Our policy is not to allow any commercial exploitation of flight reservations and we will want to ensure that the flight experience for private individuals is not compromised by obligations to third parties,” wrote Pelly. “This will be covered in the Conditions of Carriage that each customer will sign in the lead up to their flight, and will set out limitations and restrictions on use of mementos.”
Personal preference kits
The practice of astronauts (and cosmonauts) flying personal items on their missions dates back to the very early days of the human spaceflight. At first, these small mementos were rarely looked at as having any monetary value and were seen more as gifts for family, friends and coworkers.
As human activities in space expanded, though, the public’s interest in owning a piece of the program grew along with it. It was not too long before some of the astronauts’ personal preference kits (PPKs) began to include items provided by commercial interests — which either traded or outright compensated crew members for flying items to be later sold.
As spaceflight was then still a government-led affair, these side deals drew the attention of lawmakers, who sought to put an end to any profiteering from a taxpayer-funded activity. Ultimately, NASA had to codify what was acceptable as the astronauts’ personal items, specifically restricting any PPK-flown item from being “sold, transferred for sale, used or transferred for personal gain or used or transferred for any commercial or fundraising purpose.”
Further, “items such as philatelic [stamp-related] materials and coins that, by their nature, lend themselves to exploitation by the recipients,” were outright banned — a restriction that exists to this day.
Those rules, however, only apply to NASA astronauts until they retire from government service. Then they are free to sell, donate or otherwise dispose of as they please any of the space-flown personal items they were allowed to keep from their missions. (A similar scenario applies to other space agencies’ astronauts, though some are more open to their crew members taking part in commercial opportunities than is NASA.)
It is unclear if a similar expiration will apply to passengers on Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic or other companies’ flights, or if exceptions will be made.
SpaceX, for example, recently completed Inspiration4, its first privately-funded astronaut mission. The crew used the sale of flown mementos to further their goal of raising $200 million for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It was unclear if they were limited to charitable sales or if they could have also sold items for their personal gain if they so chose.
Pelly said that “as a point of principle” Virgin Galactic would not be against anything that raises funds for charity, but their rules governing such are still being worked out. The company plans to begin flying paying passengers in 2022.
As for Shatner and his Blue Origin crewmates, their items will remain personal.
“I have got three or four little trinkets from people,” said Shatner. “They will stay in that little blue satchel.”
Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2021 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
[ad_2]
Original Post
Yay google is my king helped me to find this great internet site! .
Hello would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re utilizing? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 completely different browsers and I must say this blog loads a lot faster then most. Can you recommend a good hosting provider at a reasonable price? Kudos, I appreciate it!
Merely a smiling visitor here to share the love (:, btw outstanding design and style. “Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad.” by Christina Georgina Rossetti.
Good web site! I really love how it is simple on my eyes and the data are well written. I am wondering how I could be notified when a new post has been made. I’ve subscribed to your RSS which must do the trick! Have a great day!
I like what you guys are up too. Such clever work and reporting! Carry on the excellent works guys I have incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it’ll improve the value of my site :).
What i don’t understood is in fact how you are not actually much more neatly-liked than you might be now. You’re so intelligent. You already know therefore considerably in the case of this subject, made me for my part imagine it from a lot of varied angles. Its like women and men are not interested until it’s something to do with Woman gaga! Your own stuffs nice. At all times handle it up!
Good info. Lucky me I reach on your website by accident, I bookmarked it.
This web site is really a walk-through for all of the info you wanted about this and didn’t know who to ask. Glimpse here, and you’ll definitely discover it.
Hello there! Do you know if they make any plugins to safeguard against hackers? I’m kinda paranoid about losing everything I’ve worked hard on. Any suggestions?
great points altogether, you just gained a brand new reader. What would you suggest in regards to your post that you made a few days ago? Any positive?
Hi my family member! I wish to say that this article is awesome, nice written and include approximately all significant infos. I would like to look extra posts like this .
You can definitely see your enthusiasm in the work you write. The arena hopes for even more passionate writers like you who aren’t afraid to mention how they believe. Always go after your heart. “Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice.” by George Goethals.
obviously like your web-site however you have to test the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling issues and I to find it very troublesome to inform the truth nevertheless I will definitely come back again.
Wow, wonderful blog layout! How long have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The overall look of your web site is excellent, as well as the content!
I?¦ve recently started a site, the information you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thanks for all of your time & work.
I’m still learning from you, but I’m making my way to the top as well. I certainly enjoy reading all that is written on your blog.Keep the information coming. I loved it!
I got what you intend, thankyou for posting.Woh I am pleased to find this website through google.
Can I just say what a relief to find someone who actually knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You definitely know how to bring an issue to light and make it important. More people need to read this and understand this side of the story. I cant believe youre not more popular because you definitely have the gift.
Unquestionably imagine that that you stated. Your favorite justification seemed to be at the net the easiest factor to understand of. I say to you, I definitely get irked even as folks consider issues that they plainly do not recognise about. You controlled to hit the nail upon the top as neatly as outlined out the whole thing with no need side-effects , other folks can take a signal. Will likely be again to get more. Thank you
I like the helpful information you provide in your articles. I’ll bookmark your blog and check again here frequently. I’m quite sure I’ll learn lots of new stuff right here! Best of luck for the next!
It’s perfect time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I could I want to suggest you few interesting things or advice. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I wish to read even more things about it!
I and my friends happened to be looking at the nice information and facts located on your web blog and then unexpectedly got an awful suspicion I had not expressed respect to the website owner for those strategies. My people are already so glad to see them and have in effect extremely been taking pleasure in those things. Thank you for being quite kind and for selecting this kind of amazing subjects most people are really desirous to know about. Our honest apologies for not saying thanks to sooner.
Thanks for the auspicious writeup. It in reality used to be a amusement account it. Look complex to far added agreeable from you! By the way, how could we be in contact?
Would love to forever get updated outstanding web blog! .
Today, I went to the beach front with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear. She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic but I had to tell someone!
Do you mind if I quote a couple of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to your webpage? My blog is in the very same area of interest as yours and my visitors would really benefit from some of the information you provide here. Please let me know if this ok with you. Thank you!
Hi there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The text in your content seem to be running off the screen in Ie. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with internet browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The layout look great though! Hope you get the issue resolved soon. Thanks
You completed various fine points there. I did a search on the theme and found the majority of persons will have the same opinion with your blog.
Some really marvelous work on behalf of the owner of this internet site, utterly outstanding subject material.
Howdy, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just curious if you get a lot of spam responses? If so how do you stop it, any plugin or anything you can advise? I get so much lately it’s driving me insane so any assistance is very much appreciated.
Thank you for sharing excellent informations. Your web site is very cool. I am impressed by the details that you¦ve on this site. It reveals how nicely you understand this subject. Bookmarked this website page, will come back for more articles. You, my pal, ROCK! I found simply the info I already searched everywhere and just could not come across. What a perfect web site.