Shatner, Trek's Kirk, reaches final frontier on Blue Origin ship

Hollywood's Captain Kirk, 90-year-old William Shatner, blasted into space Wednesday in a convergence of science fiction and science reality, reaching the final frontier on board a ship built by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin company. The Star Trek hero became the oldest person to ride a rocket, eclipsing the previous record -- set by a passenger on a similar jaunt on a Bezos spaceship in July -- by eight years. Dressed in a royal blue flight suit, Shatner joined three fellow passengers, four to five decades younger, on board the fully automated capsule that took off from remote West Texas for an up-and-down flight scheduled to last just 10 minutes or so. The spaceship aimed for an altitude of 106 kilometres (66 miles), at the fringes of space, after which the capsule was set to parachute back to the desert floor. Sci-fi fans revelled in the opportunity to see the man best known as the stalwart Captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise boldly go where no star of American TV has gone before.