CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (NewsNation Now) — It’s not exactly “where no one has gone before,” but the captain of the original “Star Trek” series, William Shatner, will be blasting off for orbit next week. Star Trek’s Captain Kirk is rocketing into space next week — boldly going where no other sci-fi actors have gone.
Jeff Bezos’ space travel company, Blue Origin, announced Monday that William Shatner will blast off from West Texas on Oct. 12.
While Shatner will be the first living “Star Trek” cast member in space, he’ll actually be following series creator Gene Roddenberry, whose ashes were flown into space and returned in 1992, and James Doohan, known to series fans as the indomitable engineer Montgomery Scott, whose ashes were blasted into space aboard a SpaceX rocket in 2012.
Not all of “Scotty’s” ashes made that trip, however. His son, Chris Doohan, revealed in 2020 that a private astronaut flying for Roscosmos had smuggled a small amount of the actor’s ashes aboard the International Space Station in 2008 and hidden them under a metal floor panel, where they’d ridden undiscovered.
At age 90, Shatner will become the oldest person in space. He’ll join three others — two of them paying customers — aboard a Blue Origin capsule. It will be the company’s second launch with a crew.
Bezos was on the debut flight in July, along with his brother and the youngest and oldest to fly in space at the time. Shatner will break that upper threshold by six years.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now. I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle,” Shatner said in a statement.
The up-and-down space hop will last 10 minutes and reach no higher than about 66 miles.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.