What was James Bond going to do in the Space Shuttle?

Question

In You Only Live Twice, he is in Blofeld's bunker, dressed as an astronaut about to get on the space shuttle, when Blofeld stops him.

What was his plan once he got onto the shuttle? Wasn't it supposed to blow up mid-air after capturing an American shuttle?

Also, he was caught out by Blofeld because he was going to take his portable air conditioning unit onto the space shuttle (which no astronaut would ever do). Are we supposed to assume he could have killed the other astronaut and flown the shuttle somewhere else?

Answer 1

In this scene it is clear that his motive was to infiltrate into Blofeld's shuttle and prevent the capturing of the American one. We can see from previous scenes of the movie that it was critical not to let that capturing mission succeed as the consequences would be catastrophic.

With so little time left and given that he was alone in a base full of enemies the only logical action was to infiltrate in that shuttle, where he would be alone with only two enemies (a much easier opponents than a whole army) and destroy Blofeld's schemes.

Given that James Bond has excellent military training after defeating his two opponents he could bring the shuttle back to Earth.

(The last part is obviously only a guess as it didn't happen in the movie, but it is a quite plausible scenario for such a movie, keeping in mind that in another movie James Bond did go to space.)