William Shatner tears up after becoming the oldest person to reach space

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The 90-year-old Star Trek icon successfully completed a suborbital trip to space today aboard a Blue Origin New Origin spacecraft. Lifelong Star Trek fan Jeff Bezos flew Shatner for free. "Everybody in the world needs to do this," said Shatner, who hugged Bezos after emerging from the capsule. "Everybody in the world needs to see." Shatner said the trip made him realize how precious life can be. "To see the blue color (of the sky) go rip by and now you're staring into blackness, that's the thing," he said. "The covering of blue, this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us, we think, 'Oh, that's blue sky,' and then suddenly you shoot through it all as if you rip off a sheet while you're asleep, and you're looking into blackness. "You look down...there is mother Earth, comfort. And (up) there, is there death? I don't know. Is that the way death is? Whoop, and it's gone. Jeez. It was so moving. This experience, it's something unbelievable." Many Star Trek fans were excited to see the Captain James T. Kirk actor actually go to space. "I think this is fantastic for the Star Trek mythos, to have the guy who really started it all to go into space," said Russ Haslage, who co-founded the fan organization The Federation, also known as the International Federation of Trekkers, with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry in the 1980s. "He’s the guy who’s at the center of all of this. There wouldn’t be any of this without Captain Kirk.”