Star Trek’s William Shatner wants to go into space - for real

William Shatner appears on the Comic-Con@Home panel, “Back to the Moon and Beyond with NASA”

William Shatner has made it known that he’s definitely interested in going into space, according to a recent Space.com article. Shatner moderated the “Back to the Moon and Beyond with NASA” panel, part of Comic-Con@Home last week. The panel featured astronauts Kjell Lindgren and Nicole Mann, as well as space technology expert LaNetra Tate and spacesuit engineer Lindsay Aitchison. Conversation in the panel focused on NASA’s Artemis program, which is aiming to land humans safely on Earth’s moon by 2024.

While they were on the subject, Shatner commented he might be making the journey into space, as well. “There’s a possibility that I’m going to go up for a brief moment and come back down,” Shatner said during the panel. The type of flight Shatner was referring to would likely be a suborbital commercial flight, such as those proposed by Virgin Galactic. His desire to head into space shouldn’t come as a surprise. In May, Shatner tweeted a photo to NASA of himself in a SpaceX suit in advance of the Crew Dragon Demon-2 launch, which sent American astronauts Robert Benkhen and Douglas Hurley to the International Space Station. Along with the photo, Shatner said “Just in case; the suit does fit!”

BTW @NASA - just in case; the suit does fit! 😉😝 #LaunchAmerica #AstroBill 🚀🛰 pic.twitter.com/Wa9DuV08Vt

— William Shatner (@WilliamShatner) May 20, 2020

While he might be excited at the idea, Shatner admitted that he is still concerned about the “O-ring problem” when it comes to spaceflight. In the statement, he was likely referring to a rocket booster seal, one of several failures which led to the destruction of the USS Challenger. Astronaut Kjell Lindgren reassured the 89-year-old actor that safety is a top priority for spaceflight, saying, “We take the lessons that we learned very seriously, and apply those lessons to how we do business now and how we plan to do business in the future."

Time will tell, but perhaps Captain James T. Kirk will fly in space once again.