At 90, actor William Shatner, the star of the original ''Star Trek'' television series who brought to life the iconic Starship Enterprise as Capt. James Tiberius Kirk, will ''boldly go where no man (his age) has gone before.''
According to a TMZ report Friday, Shatner is slated to become the oldest man in space when he boards the next Blue Origin rocket excursion into low orbit next month.
Blue Origin is owned by billionaire and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who made history as being among the first civilians to see the stars in July when he and three others took off in his Blue Origin New Shepard rocket for a 10-minute visit to the realm of space, about 66 miles above the Earth.
Editor's Note: Actor William Shatner at 80 made a surprising discovery — Read More Here
The passengers on that ride included Bezos' brother Mark, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen from the Netherlands, and female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, at 82 the oldest person to go to space.
Shatner, who has spent the last six decades portraying the character whom ''Star Trek'' TV series creator Gene Roddenberry called the ''Horatio Hornblower of the Galaxy,'' would take over that title during a planned 15-minute journey to the edge of space in October, according to the TMZ report.
The voyage is planned to be filmed as part of a documentary for Shatner's production company, Shatner and Co., and is being shopped around after Discovery reportedly rejected the idea.
The Daily Mail said it contacted both Blue Origin and Shatner, but neither would confirm the story.
In a July interview with NBC News, Shatner seemed less enthusiastic about the realities of traveling the stars than his alter ego Kirk might have been.
''I know there is an argument to be made about popularizing space travel, and I've talked to a lot of travelers to space who are excited to get to Mars,'' Shatner said. ''But if any little speck of that mote of dust we were talking about hits your spaceship, it punctures it and then they've got to plug it up.
''If you basically have a flat tire in space, it means you die. It seems to me you're more likely to die there than on the Hollywood Freeway.''
He also admitted that he knows little about the ''final frontier'' despite the years he and his fictional crew have been gallivanting around the cosmos, exploring strange new worlds, and seeking out new life and new civilizations.
''It's impossible, as far as I know, for life to live long enough to come from someplace else to here. It's tens of thousands of years of time, however you govern time: atomic clock, 24 hours, your heartbeat, the mileage you're putting on,'' he said.
''I wrote a short story in which people take off to space, and 500 years into the trip they forget where they're going. Do we remember 100 years ago? How about 2,000 years ago?''
Editor's Note: Actor William Shatner at 80 made a surprising discovery — Read More Here
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