William Shatner is set to take a "star trek", flying to space with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin next week
(Left) Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket lifts off. Image Blue Origin. (Right) William Shatner appears at Star Trek Las Vegas in 2019. Image Alison Pitt.
OCTOBER 6, 2021 - In his 90 years on Earth, William Shatner has been many things: recording artist, author, director, philanthropist, reality TV star, horse breeder, and…oh yeah, the actor who brought space adventurer Captain James T. Kirk to life for nearly 30 years. As of October 12th he’ll be able to add one more thing to the list, and it’s perhaps the most astounding one of all: real-life astronaut.
The news was confirmed on October 4th through the Twitter account of Blue Origin, the private spaceflight company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in 2000. Shatner retweeted the news with a sly reference to his often-mocked performance of an Elton John classic, saying, “Yes, it’s true; I’m going to be a ‘rocket man!’”
The roughly 10-12 minute flight, dubbed “NS-18” by Blue Origin, will be the second manned spaceflight for the company, following the launch in July which took Bezos into space alongside his brother Mark and two others, including NASA legend Wally Funk. At the time, her time in space aboard that flight made 82-year-old Funk the oldest person to fly in space. If all goes well for NS-18, Shatner will break that record at age 90 when NS-18 passes the Kármán Line, the name given to the 62-mile point above sea level which many consider the place where Earth ends and “space, the final frontier” begins.
Shatner appeared on Anderson Cooper’s CNN program Wednesday night to talk about his upcoming trip. Speaking of his plans while in space, the Star Trek star remarked, “I want to press my nose up against the plastic window. What I don’t want to see is somebody else out there, looking back at me,” a subtle nod, perhaps, to his classic 1963 Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
The spaceflight will be broadcast live on October 12th on BlueOrigin.com. Liftoff is expected to be around 8:30am CDT (subject to change, of course), with coverage starting around T-90 minutes . If William Shatner recites any classic Star Trek lines while in space, we’ll carry the news for you here on Daily Star Trek News once we wipe the tears from our eyes.