Last October, Star Trek legend William Shatner became the oldest person to fly in space when he took to the sky with three other crew members aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-18, but while the flight was one for the history books and one that Shatner spoke of as “unbelievable” when he first returned to Earth, the experience wasn’t exactly a joyful one. In his new book, Boldly Go: Reflections of a Life of Awe and Wonder, Shatner describes his space flight as one that filled him with dread and instead of a celebration felt like a funeral.
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“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things — that being up there would be the next beautiful step in understanding the harmony of the universe,” Shatner wrote (via Variety). “In the film Contact, when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, ‘They should’ve sent a poet.’ I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.”
He continued, “It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna … things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
Prior to his Blue Origin flight, Shatner, who is best known for playing Captain James T. Kirk on Star Trek, expressed that he had long wanted to go to space.
“I’ve heard about space for a long time now,” Shatner said. “I’m taking the opportunity to see it for myself. What a miracle.”
“I want to see space, I want to see the Earth, I want to see what we need to do to save Earth,” Shatner told Gayle King on CBS Mornings prior to launch. “I want to have a perspective that hasn’t been shown to me before. That’s what I’m interested in seeing.”
Shatner’s book, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, co-authored with Josh Brandon, is on sale now.
