The legendary former Star Trek captain, William Shatner, opened up to a New York Comic Con audience on Thursday night about his October 12 launch into space with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. And he isn't necessarily ready "to boldly go."
"I'm scared," he told the supportive crowd while chuckling. "Captain Kirk going where no man -- I'm going what? Where am I going?"
The 90-year-old acting veteran had at first avoided talking about the upcoming trip, recounting stories about his latest album and hosting his talk show instead. Eventually, he got to the part that his fans were waiting for: how he ended up slated to become the oldest person in space.
"I don't want to be known as the oldest guy who went into space!" Shatner joked. "I'm bloody Captain Kirk!"
Still, Shatner ended up agreeing to the voyage while noting that the doubts about his safety came from thoughts about the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster, the early technical problems that beset the Hubble space telescope, and the phrase "our best guess" which he would hear during his visit to the Blue Origin facility outside of Van Horn, Texas.
"And I'm thinking I'm going up in a rocket and 'our best guess' is it should be fine," he stated. "So there's a little niggling fire of terror. I'm terrified."
Expertly playing the audience, he managed to trade his fright for laughs, even referencing another of his classic roles on The Twilight Zone, where he played the one panicky passenger that can see a monster on the wing of a plane.
Despite the breezy storytelling style, Shatner ended his appearance with a story of seeing the Earth in perspective like a mote of dust hanging suspended in a vast emptiness, and it led him to call for his fellow earthlings to stop causing a mess on the planet — though, he used stronger language.
