Lore 303: Shoot for the Stars

Aaron Mahnke· Host0:00

[gentle music] It was a seemingly typical autumn day when actor William Shatner suited up, stepped into a starship, and for the umpteenth time in his career, prepared to boldly go where no man has gone before. He'd enacted this ritual countless times while portraying the beloved James T. Kirk, captain of Star Trek's USS Enterprise, but this was different. Today, you see, he wasn't simply playing an astronaut on TV. No, on October 13th of twenty twenty-one, William Shatner actually became one. After months of flight simulations and training courses, the actor joined three fellow voyagers aboard the Blue Origin rocket New Shepard NS eighteen, which successfully blasted off for a ten-minute-long suborbital space flight. At ninety years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to ever visit outer space. It's hard to imagine how significant that moment must have felt for him. After all, this is a guy whose name has been synonymous with space travel since 1966, three years before the moon landing, and here he was, finally leaving the Earth's atmosphere for the very first time. You would probably expect that it was a joyful experience, a full circle moment. Shatner himself certainly thought that it would be. But as it turned out, the reality was something far different. "I love the mysteries