Blue Origin prepares to beam William Shatner and crew into space Wednesday
Science fiction is about to become reality.
William Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk in "Star Trek," is set to blast off into space on Wednesday from West Texas.
Shatner will be one of four crew members onboard Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin's, New Shepard rocket.
"Yes, it's true; I'm going to be a 'rocket man!'" Shatner tweeted when news of the launch broke last week. "It's never too late to experience new things."
The launch was initially set for Tuesday, but had to be delayed one day due to high winds in the area.
"I'm deeply disappointed, because I was building up the enthusiastic response, now we have to wait another day," Shatner said in an interview on "Good Morning America" on Monday. "[But] it's really worth it. What's a day with this extraordinary experience that we're about to have."
If successful, Wednesday would mark the second civilian flight to space for Bezos' Blue Origin. The first flight was just two months ago and carried Bezos himself, Bezos' brother Mark, an 18-year-old student, and eighty-two year old Wally Funk to the edge of space.
Shatner, 90, is set to beat out Funk and become the oldest person to travel to the final frontier.
The flight is expected to last about 11 minutes and take Shatner and the crew around 60 miles above the Earth's surface. They will hit weightlessness in zero gravity for about four minutes.
"I assume they're gonna give [Shatner] a great strenuous physical test to make sure that he's totally capable of undergoing the 3gs or less that he's going to pull," Former NASA Astronaut Clayton Anderson told ABC News, "and he's really going to enjoy the ride, I'm sure. But if you look at his Star Trek history, I think he's way overqualified for this mission."
"I'll look forward to see if Shatner yells for warp factor three as he's headed uphill," he added.
New Shepard's 18th mission, NS-18, has targeted liftoff on Oct. 13, at 8:30 am CT from Launch Site One in West Texas.
ABC News' Gio Benitez and Kelly McCarthy contributed to this report.
