INTERNATIONAL: At last, he’s actually boldly gone where few men have gone before. Actor William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the Star Trek TV series, has become the oldest person in space after last night’s flight aboard a Blue Origin rocketship.

On the launchpad – Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket. Not exactly the USS Enterprise – but William Shatner’s real-life ticket into space nonetheless. A textbook lift-off and a ten-minute journey the actor admitted beforehand he was absolutely terrified about. At 90, Shatner is the oldest person ever in space. He was one of four passengers on Blue Origin's second space tourist flight and enjoyed about 3 minutes of zero gravity, before it was time to get back down to Earth.

The crew capsule touched down on the Texas desert under parachutes, raising a cloud of dust. Shatner emerged gingerly from the capsule, thanking Jeff Bezos for the experience:

"Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see this. It's the most unbelievable - unbelievable. You know, the little things, but to see the blue cover go, go by you, and now you're staring into blackness. That's the thing. The covering of blue, this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us, we say 'oh, that's blue sky' and suddenly you shoot through it all as though you rip off a sheet off you when you are asleep. And you're looking into blackness. Into black ugliness. And you look down - there's the blue down there - and the black up there and there is Mother Earth - comfort - and there is - is there death? I don't know. Is that death? Is that the way death is? Jesus. It was so moving. This experience - it's something unbelievable."

Even more unbelievable, Blue Origins isn’t yet saying how much the ticket prices are, but the youngest person in space’s dad paid an eye-watering $28-million for his son’s ten-minute ride on Blue Origin’s first flight in July.

^{PHOTO: BLUE ORIGIN ROCKET LAUNCHING}