AUSTIN (KXAN) — You may know him as Captain Kirk, or the oldest person to ever travel to space.
William Shatner, 92, is making his way to Austin this weekend for GalaxyCon, a three-day, comic-con-style convention featuring more than 150 guests as well as photo ops, Q&As, panels, costume contests, cosplay events, workshops, parties, gaming tournaments and celebrity meet and greets.
It won’t be the actor’s first time in the capital city. He’s been before, but one trip in particular, driving overnight from West Texas, stood out. Shatner told KXAN Austin was “a college town, and it was completely different from the rest of Texas.”
Shatner is coming for GalaxyCon, where he’ll do meet and greets, sign autographs, and what he’s looking forward to most — he’ll be part of a panel.
“In the fullness of my flesh. I shall be there. So, it’s a comic con, and I’m coming into town to sign autographs and pose for pictures,” Shatner said. “But more fun for me is having what they call a panel, being in front of the audience for about an hour and entertaining them there.”
“Well, Austin’s a great city, burgeoning city, great university. I’ve known it for a long time. I’m so looking forward to being there Friday night and Saturday. Meeting with as many people as I can,” he said.
Shatner is also the oldest person to have traveled to space. He traveled on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin with three other passengers in 2021. The crew launched from a site in West Texas, southeast of El Paso.
“It’s too meaningful to talk about, in a short space of time, enough to say that I saw more emphatically than I have as an ecologist for a great part of my life… I saw more emphatically what harm we have done to this incredible rock. This little rock that we’re on, the incredible harm that we’ve done it,” Shatner said of his voyage into the final frontier. “Everything is beautiful. Everything that has evolved into existence is precious, and we have to recognize that.”
Shatner will make appearances at GalaxyCon on Friday and Saturday nights. Tickets for the convention are available for purchase online.
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