Sign up for DailyExpertNews’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news of fascinating discoveries, scientific progress and more.
DailyExpertNews
—
Astronauts have described their journeys to space for decades as “breathtaking” and humbling, a reminder of Earth’s fragility and humanity’s need to serve as stewards of our home planet.
Actor William Shatner, who took part in a suborbital space tourism flight last year, experienced the same phenomenon, but he had a very clear observation when he turned his gaze from Earth to the black expanse of the cosmos: “All I saw was death,” he said. wrote in a new book.
Shatner’s biography, titled “Boldly Go,” which he co-wrote with TV and film writer Joshua Brandon, is filled with equally grim anecdotes about Shatner’s experience rocketing above Earth’s atmosphere aboard a real-life rocket after his momentous stint as captain. from a spaceship in the 1960s TV show “Star Trek” and several franchise movies in the following decades.
“I saw a cold, dark, black void. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned to the light of home. I could see the curvature of the earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Care, maintain, live. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I left her,” reads an excerpt from “Boldly Go,” first published by Variety.
“Everything I thought was wrong,” it reads. “Everything I expected to see was wrong.”
While he had expected to be impressed by the vision of the cosmos seen without the filter of Earth’s atmosphere, he was instead overwhelmed by the idea that humans are slowly destroying our home planet. He felt one of the strongest feelings of sadness he has ever encountered, Shatner wrote.
Shatner’s book was released on October 4 by Simon & Schuster publishers. DailyExpertNews interviewed him in June about the book, his journey into space with Jeff Bezos-backed space tourism company Blue Origin, and what’s next for the 91-year-old. A transcript of the interview, edited for length and clarity, is below.
DailyExpertNews: We all saw how emotional you were when you got off the Blue Origin spacecraft after landing. How has that experience changed you?
William Shatner: Fifty-five or 60 years ago I read a book called “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson. She wrote about the environmental problems that still exist today. Since then I have been a verbal ecologist. I have been aware of the changing earth and my concern for all of us.
It’s like someone owes money to a mortgage, and they don’t have the payments. And they think, “Oh, let’s go eat and not think about it.”
But it’s so ubiquitous! The possibilities of an apocalypse are so real. It is difficult to convince people – especially certain political people – that this is no longer on our doorstep. It’s in the house.
When I got into space, I wanted to go to the window and see what was out there. I looked at the blackness of the room. There were no blinding lights. It was just palpable blackness. I believed I saw death.
And then I looked back to Earth. Given my background and after reading a lot of things about the evolution of the earth over 5 billion years and how all the beauty of nature has evolved, I thought about how we kill everything.
I felt this overwhelming sadness for the earth.
I didn’t realize it until I went downstairs. When I got off the spacecraft, I started to cry. I didn’t know why. It took me hours to understand why I was crying. I realized that I was mourning the earth.
I never want to forget, nor have I forgotten, the significance of that occasion.
DailyExpertNews: What else have you realized about the experience in the months since you made your spaceflight?
Shatner: I was aware that humans may be the only living species on this planet that is aware of the vastness and grandeur of the universe.
Consider what we’ve discovered over the past 100 years, given the 200,000 years that humans have existed. We have discovered how mountains were formed, the Big Bang. And I kept thinking about how humanity is rapidly evolving into a knowledgeable being as it kills itself.
It’s a breed.
DailyExpertNews: Space tourism companies like Blue Origin have also received a lot of criticism from people who see these efforts more as a vanity project for wealthy individuals than anything that can be truly transformative. How do you respond to that criticism?
Shatner: The whole idea here is to get people used to going to space, like it’s like going to the Riviera. It’s not just a vanity – it’s a business.
But what Jeff Bezos wants to do, and what’s slowly growing because of our familiarity with space, is put those polluting industries into orbit and bring the Earth back to what it was. (Editor’s Note: Bezos has regularly talked about putting heavy industries into orbit to help conserve Earth, and that idea has taken its toll. skeptics and critics.)
DailyExpertNews: What do you think of the title ‘astronaut’. Are people who pay for short, sub-orbital flights to space astronauts?
Shatner: I call them half astronauts.
DailyExpertNews: What should we do in space now?
Shatner: The ability to go to Mars, which lurks in the background, which I think should be a backseat to go to the moon, set up the moon as a base, and mine what the moon has to offer, in instead of mining it here.
Those are just my own opinions. What-is-his-name would disagree. He wants to go to Mars. (Editor’s Note: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk founded his company with the goal of establishing a colony on Mars.)
DailyExpertNews: Are you eager to go back to space?
Shatner: If you had a great love affair, could you go back? Or would that humiliate it?
DailyExpertNews: You said you had the chance to speak with the famous astrophysicist Stephen Hawking before he died. How was that experience?
Shatner: I never got to ask him about string theory, which I did. We had to get him all the questions in advance. And he had said when we made the appointment, “I want to ask Shatner a question.”
Finally, I lean forward, you know, we sit next to each other and look at the cameras.
So he laboriously typed, “What’s your favorite Star Trek episode?” that’s the question every fan asks, and I started laughing. He couldn’t smile (because of his degenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS).
But his smile was visible in the redness of his face and he turned so red. He then invited me to dinner. I had a nice moment with him.
DailyExpertNews: What are you doing now?
Shatner: I should take this opportunity to say that I have an album called ‘Bill’. And I kept making songs with my collaborators. The song ‘So Fragile, So Blue’ is very much about my experience in space. Recently I performed with (musician) Ben Folds at the Kennedy Center. That could be a TV show or an album.
I also have a really great show called “The UnXplained” on the History Channel.
And then I have my book, called “Boldly Go,” which is due out in the fall.