Star Trek star William Shatner reportedly going to space in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket

William Shatner is set to head into space via Jeff Bezos’ civilian flight rocket, reports suggest.

The Star Trek actor is expected to make the journey via the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket on a flight in October, according to TMZ.

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At a glance: 5 key points

• The journey would make Shatner, who is 90 years-old, the oldest person to ever be launched into space.

• The actor has spoken of his desire to travel into space many times before and shared a photoshopped image of himself in a spacesuit last year, which he tweeted to NASA.

• Shatner asked if he could join the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demon-2 commercial spaceflight to the International Space Station, tweeting: “Just in case; the suit does fit!”

• While the reports have yet to be confirmed, TMZ suggested that the 15-minute flight could be filmed for a documentary.

• Bezos, the founder of Amazon, flew into space in July this year for a brief period on a private rocket.

What’s been said

Shatner, who is famed for portraying Captain James T. Kirk in the popular Star Trek franchise, hinted that a trip into space could be on the cards during a Comic-Con event in San Diego earlier this year.

He told the audience: “There’s a possibility that I’m going to go up for a brief moment and come back down.”

He is expected to make the trip via Bezos’ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, who flew into space this summer.

Bezos and fellow businessman Richard Branson took the trip into space together, with the pair both hoping to make a profit from expanding “space tourism”.

While the expedition only lasted for a few minutes, it cost billions of dollars.

Bezos recently pledged $1bn to conservation projects around the world after saying his trip to space made him realise how “fragile” the planet was.

He said: “Nature is our life support system and it’s fragile. I was reminded of this just this July when I went into space with Blue Origin.

“I’d heard that seeing the Earth from space changes one’s point of view of the world. But I was not prepared for just how much that would be true.

“Living down here, the world and the atmosphere seem vast and they seem stable.

“But looking back at Earth from there, the atmosphere seems thin and the world finite. Both beautiful, both fragile.”

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