William Shatner, 90, In Talks To Fly On Blue Origin’s Next Space Trip

Former Star Trek star William Shatner may be heading on another space journey, this time in an actual spaceship and not a film set.

The 90-year old actor is in talks with billionaire tycoon Jeff Bezos about joining a trip to space in October. Shatner would be the oldest person to head to space, taking that title from 82-year old Wally Funk, who also went on the first passenger space trip with Bezos.

 

The travel to the “final frontier” will be filmed for an upcoming documentary about space tourism. The trip in October will be Blue Origin’s second trip to space. The first one was back in July. The passengers on that trip were Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos and two others, Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemon. Daemon was the youngest person ever to fly to space.

Blue Origin was founded by Bezos in 2000 with the intention to make space travel more accessible through reusable launch systems. It was “designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Karman line-the internationally recognized boundary of space,” according to its website.

Bezos, however, wasn’t the first billionaire to reach space. Sir Richard Branson took the first-ever passenger space flight on July 11 with five others.

The Federal Aviation Administration recently issued new guidelines for future flights defining what makes someone an “astronaut.” The new rules “demonstrate activities during the flight that was essential to public safety, or contributed to human space flight safety.” Only those who went through proper training would be considered actual astronauts.

Shanter has not confirmed the news of him officially joining the flight.