William Shatner will be following the footsteps of his Star Trek character Captain Kirk and boldly going...well, where more and more people have been as he is reportedly about to join the growing number of people who have ventured into space on board Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.

A report has revealed that Shatner is planning on becoming the oldest person to have ventured into space as part of Bezos' "15 minute civilian flight", which would be a rerun of the flight that Bezos took into the lower atmosphere earlier this year. The report also suggested that Shatner is looking to use the opportunity to make a documentary about the experience.

This is not the first time William Shatner has talking about jumping on board a space flight, after having joked about being willing to go into space if he had Elon Musk with him. Those comments were made a couple of years ago when he was asked by a fan on Twitter if he'd head into the stars with the Space X founder. "Yes, with him in the seat next to me. I'll hold his hand during take off as an added bonus," Shatner joked at the time. It seems like now, he may not be joking any more.

TMZ's report states that the 90 year old is currently on the list to be part of the second crew that will be heading out on the New Shepard rocket when it takes its next journey in October, and if all goes to plan, it is likely that we will soon after find out more information about where and when we will be able to see his documentary, which was originally being discussed at Discovery, but has since been moved elsewhere for discussions.

Jeff Bezos made his first trip into space in July, along with his brother Mark, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen, when the rocket shot up to 66.5 miles, lingered around in zero-gravity for a short while and then came back down to earth safely. There is no further information available as to who will be also boarding the space module with Bezos and Shatner, or what the latter is paying for the privilege although there has been a suggestion that he could well not be paying what would be expected of anyone else, which would make sense given the possibility of the free publicity from Shatner's documentary being on offer.

On Blue Origin's first flight, the final seat taken by Daemen was sold through an auction and ended up costing the student's father $20 million. Whether there will be a similar auction on the newest flight is yet to be announced, but it seems that like there will be no shortage of people with that kind of loose change in their pockets willing to splash out for the honor of being part of the Bezos space race.

While Shatner seems all set to be making his first real journey into the final frontier, one thing that he has no plans for is returning to the franchise that made him a cultural icon. Back in 2019, the actor made it clear in an interview with ComicBook.com that he was done with the kind of punishing work schedule that comes with TV roles. "You'd have to resurrect me, Shatner, in order to do the daily [laughes] I don't know what Patrick [Stewart] is doing. Doing a series is debilitating for a young guy, for a 25-year-old, which I was doing when I was 25 years old. It's a physical wrecker, it's a mental wrecker, and it's a homewrecker 'cause you're working 14, 18 hours a day. And in the last series I did, Boston Legal, I had, in rush hour, a two-hour commute. So add that. So no, I would not be interested in doing a series, per se." This news broke at TMZ.