William Shatner Is in Talks to Head into Space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Rocket: Source

Nicholas Rice
·2 min read
William Shatner visits SiriusXM Studios on September 6, 2018 in New York City.
William Shatner visits SiriusXM Studios on September 6, 2018 in New York City.

Santiago Felipe/Getty

William Shatner is considering a real-life trip to space.

The 90-year-old actor — who previously played the iconic role of Captain Kirk on Star Trek — is in talks to travel to space in October aboard a civilian flight on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, "but it's not a done deal yet," a source tells PEOPLE.

"He's almost certainly going but they're still working out the finer points," the insider adds. "It's just not totally confirmed yet."

The trip would make Shatner the oldest person to fly into outer space.

Per TMZ, which was first to report the intergalactic news, Shatner's blast off will reportedly be filmed for a documentary.

A representative for Shatner and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment.

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Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew (L-R) Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk, and Mark Bezos pose for a picture near the booster after flying into space in the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. Mr. Bezos and the crew were the first human spaceflight for the company.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard crew (L-R) Oliver Daemen, Jeff Bezos, Wally Funk, and Mark Bezos pose for a picture near the booster after flying into space in the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. Mr. Bezos and the crew were the first human spaceflight for the company.

Joe Raedle/Getty

RELATED: William Shatner Reveals He Has 'Never Watched' an Episode of Star Trek: 'It's All Painful'

Should the flight come to fruition, it will be the second for Blue Origin following its inaugural trip to space back in July. Bezos, 57, was joined by his brother Mark as well as both the oldest and the youngest people to ever fly to space: 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, respectively.

The mission was the first space flight with humans on board for Blue Origin, the aerospace manufacturing and spaceflight company the billionaire founded in 2000.

According to the official website, the New Shepard seats six astronauts, and since the ship is "fully autonomous," there is no pilot, making everyone onboard a passenger. The reusable vehicle takes 11-minute flights into space, "designed to take astronauts and research payloads past the Kármán line — the internationally recognized boundary of space."

Bezos' flight came just nine days after fellow billionaire Sir Richard Branson took his first trip to space aboard the VSS Unity spacecraft, Virgin Galactic's first fully crewed flight test. Branson, 71, took off alongside five others from Sierra County, New Mexico on an hour-long journey to and from suborbital space on July 11.

If Shatner does indeed fly to space sometime next month for the minutes-long civilian flight, it is currently unknown who will join him on the expedition.

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