Up until Wednesday, actor William Shatner only pretended to explore the final frontier in front of a camera in his role as James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise. With his participation in the latest Blue Origin suborbital space flight, he not only earned his spacefaring stripes but became the world's oldest person in space as well.
At the ripe age of 90, Shatner beat former record holder Wally Funk, who was part of a Blue Origin flight just three months prior, by eight years. While Shatner rose to popularity due to his role in the Stark Trek TV show and movies, the highly experienced pilot and pilot instructor Funk fought an uphill battle after being denied the chance to go into space by the U.S. government due to her gender back in the 1960s.
Coming in third on the list is John Glenn, who went to space in 1998 at the age of 77. After becoming the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962, Glenn retired as an astronaut and became a senator for several years. The famed astronaut returned to space in October 1998 when he took part in a mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77. Franklin Story Musgrave is the only astronaut to have flown aboard all five Space Shuttles and he is the fourth-oldest person to make it into space thanks to a 1996 flight onboard the Shuttle Columbia, according to the website oldest.com.
