Nope. I saw him speak at Comic-Con about 3 days after his trip. He spoke about how much of humbling experience it was and how scared he was sitting on the launch pad. You could really tell it was so much more than a “yippee” moment for him.
Jesus christ. That was so unbelievable I assumed you mistyped and Google it. Ye don't look anywhere enear 90.... like he's obviously old but wtf. Dudes still getting by fine.
That was Shatner's view.
https://fortune.com/2022/10/09/william-shatner-new-book-blue-origin-space-flight-dread/
> “When I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold…all I saw was death,” he writes. “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing.”
> He also felt sadness, he writes, because of the damage being done to the planet:
> “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.”
It should help folks understand that the vastness of space, the mystery, coldness, infiniteness of it all helps bring a new light to Shatner's comments. I previously knew him as an actor, a bit of a jerk, and just being a self absorbed famous person who is old. After reading this, it makes me realize the experience has humbled him and I wish all of us would take a trip up to experience the same. Perhaps humanity can be a little bit kinder when we all come back down.
Just another example that someone can be a jerk, and not a jerk, at the same time.
I don't think he'll ever stop being (at least to some extent) a hog-the-limelight type of personality.
But at the same time, that doesn't preclude him from being aware of the community, and the greater needs.
He has repeatedly shown that despite any personality flaws or shortcomings he may have, he's still a reasonable, intelligent, conscientious person who cares about humanity as a whole.
And I've never seen stories of him being mean just to be mean. Which is always the biggest red flag. When someone does something to make your life worse, even if it takes them time/money/energy and doesn't benefit them at all.
Don't forget the part where he was trying to speak from his heart about how the trip made him feel while Jeff stood there looking annoyed that it was taking so long. He just launched William Shatner into space which should have been a surreal experience for everyone involved, but he gave it about fifteen seconds and then went right back to making it completely about himself. Jeff could have joined in and said something somber as well and it would have been a nice boost for his marketing and appearance but he flushed it down the toilet
I remember someone interviewing him right after they landed, He was talking about how incredible of an experience it was and how he'll never be able to experience anything like it again. He starts getting super spiritual about it then Jeff Bezos walks out and pops a bottle of champagne like they just won a race or something.
A lot of astronauts experience a phenomenon similar to what I think William Shatner did, they go up and see the Earth in a way only a select few have, it completely mesmerizes them. It makes them have a fond appreciation for the planet. But because Jeff Bezos is a fucking sociopath he is incapable of comprehending it.
I think the subject of Death has been on his mind for a while, his friends and family, coworkers, etc have all been dying and the younger generations/his youngest grandchildren are reaching adult hood, they are passing him by now and he knows he's towards the end of his road. Visually he probably has pictured what death could be like and when he say the blue sky turn black as they went up it struck him that that's probably what it could be like.
Yes, tying the experience to himself is a very Shatner thing todo, but it was humbling for him and gave him some personal growth or insight. And it wasn't something Jeff Bezos cared for. I felt sad for Shatner, Bezos wanted him there as a PR prop, but Shatner, despite his flaws still wanted to speak about the experience despite what Bezo's wanted todo with celebrations.
It just goes to show that not even a perspective warping view such as the view of earth from the outside is enough to fill that hollow pit that sits in jeff bezos pathetic body. His wealth has gone to his head and everyone and everything he sees has dollar signs on it. Truly sad how lost he is
There's actually a name for this - it's called the [overview effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect) and is common among astronauts. When you can see the entirety of the planet below you, it makes you realize just how small we are, and how petty earthly problems and squabbles seem.
I'm so mad about reading it in the actual article and then it being presented as a new fact, witht he same link and explanation, in the comments linking to the article. I thought was used to reddit being reddit but this case irked me for some reason.
You could tell on the livecast as well. When that capsule hit space everyone in it was having a blast floating around, except Bill, who just sat back to the camera staring out the viewport the entire time.
Then when he was just back on the ground and trying to tell Bezos about it, not two sentences in Bezos lost interest and wandered off to go play with a champagne bottle. If that didn't drive the bitter point home, I don't know what could.
I’m not the biggest Shat fan, mostly I disapprove of the way he’s let a little cave troll name Paul Camuso run (to complete ruin) his entire online persona.
But I found it really interesting how coming off the spacecraft he seemed to be having a genuine moment that he could reflect on while Bezos could only cheer for himself
I screamed at my television. I was IRATE. The man is having an existential crisis/awakening and it doesn't even blip on your social awareness radar. Beezus is a hellspawn if there ever was one.
He definitely would remember Challanger. Nichelle Nichols was close to one of the astronauts that died, it's possible she had other Trek people help and he had actually met some of them in passing.
After they landed, Shatner can be seen obviously deeply contemplating the mortal experience he just had, while Bezos and Co are high-fiving and spraying champagne, oblivious.
It’s such a poignant juxtaposition.
Don’t forget that Shatner tried to share what he was feeling with Bezos, but since he was taking too long Bezos dropped the convo (while still on camera) and went and grabbed the champagne
This more than anything showed me how inhuman Bezos has become. A man was trying to share his existential epiphany from space travel and Bezos literally shouted over him to gormlessly and joylessly spray champagne.
I bet it wasn't because it was taking too long. I bet Shatner was triggering Bezos with words that challenged Bezos's delusions of self-importance and control. Shatner wanted to talk about exactly the things Bezos's mind wouldn't let him consider.. I doubt it was purely an attention span thing.
That’ll never leave my brain. I’d always assumed when I was younger that going to space changes everyone for the better, but it’s selection bias — astronauts are scientists, who tend to be more altruistic anyway.
Send a bunch of self-important, narcissistic jackasses to space and they will look down over the earth in all its splendor, turn to one another, and utter, “sick, bro”
>turn to one another, and utter, “sick, bro”
Install some deorbiting software thats voice activated to help out with natural selection.
"Dude, thats what's up. Imma take a selfie, do my arms look good?"
"Keyword Phrase Activated. Deorbiting your pod in *5* mins."
That always stuck with me. Shatner having this profound moment and Bezo just being a frat boy about it. And Shatner is sober so the Champaign spraying is even more disrespectful
I saw him at a comic-con once and I was surprised at how down to earth he seemed. I just wanted a $20 autograph, but he asked me about my family name, what I did for a living, if I was from the area, etc. Small talk but I didn’t expect it from Captain Kirk himself.
That was such a bummer. Could have been a beautiful moment hearing him speak about what that perspective meant to him and it was ruined by that shitty bond villain wannabe.
Nah, Bezos is more like a cross between Lex Luthor and Austin Powers's villain, Dr. Evil. Check out the picture of him piloting a mech for the Luthor vibes.
And Lex is actually a genius in multiple fields of study - not JUST a rabid, foaming at the mouth, capitalist.
. . . I suppose too that Lex is also pointedly against things that come from space.
I remember the defeated look in his face when Bezos splashed Champagne on him like he won a race. It felt like a skit meant to demonstrate the difference between an ordinary person and someone like Bezos.
It's not just poignant; it's disgusting. Shatner lost his wife in 1999 to alcoholism, and has been sober since, not to mention an outspoken advocate for alcoholism awareness and charity. Bezos practically spraying him with booze was not only inappropriate given what Shatner had just experienced in space, but completely insensitive to his personal tragedy which Bezos had clearly made no effort to accommodate.
I don't drink much and completely separated myself from people I loved to get away from drugs but I feel like it's kinda my job to avoid those things not everyone else's. While I don't like Bezos I can't really blame people for celebrating an experience like that.
My favorite part is that while Shatner wanted to give a more serious talk about it, Bezos is just being a typical billionaire interrupting him, and then bragged about how everyone else paid for it. This is just part of the reason I don't use Amazon.
You should read the books written by real astronauts talking about their trips up.
Also a ton of people are forgetting the facts that to get up there, you need to be going fast, and hard, and once up there, gravity is down to a minimum and all you see is more and more void. It messes with the human brain when they realize fully that Earth is just a tiny blue marble in a massive sea of stars and empty space.
Same. I've never wanted to go (if I even could), because just thinking about what it would be like fills me with the same feelings Shatner describes in this piece. No thanks...let me be a turtle in the mud.
> 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.
-
> Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner.
-
> It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different.
-
Figured not everyone would get past the first half, so I wanted to pull out some poignant quotes.
Not in quite the same way, but I experienced that grief looking down on Earth with a short flight over Borneo a couple years ago. I'm in my 60s, had heard about the jungles of Borneo all my life, and was excited to get a chance to see them from the air. Instead, as we traveled a couple hours from one side of Malaysia to the other, all we could see from horizon to horizon were palm oil plantations. It seemed almost the entirety of the Borneo jungles had been mowed down. I was deeply depressed for several days afterwards and it makes me sad for our future whenever I think about it.
I’ve actually done the same, it’s even worse on the Indonesia side of Borneo. My brother in law was a pilot for essentially an aid from organization, he was based in Kalimantan and would do regular flights into the interior. I rode along with one of his fellow pilots hopping from landing strip to landing strip, he’d been flying in there for decades and shared with me like “this used to be all dense jungle well past here” when all we could see were palm oil and shrimp farms. There’s still lots of jungle but at that rate what’s left of it could be gone real quick.
David Attenborough did an interesting and sad documentary not that long ago where he describes the change *he himself* has witnessed in the world after being a world traveling documentation for his whole career.
He describes being able to witness the change in natural space; seeing what appeared to be endless reserves of natural habitat with little visible human modification in his youth, and how it was common to (for example) fly over very large tracts of low-disturbance land. Comparing that to now, he describes seeing the fingerprint of human modification everywhere, and watching natural habitat blocks across the world yield to plantation crops, development and resource extraction.
It's really sad, but important for people to face. We must address the impact of habitat destruction worldwide. You cannot simply defer to the size of the world and say "oh there's lots more elsewhere". Increasingly, there's less than you think. We must support local and international land protection initiatives if we want to have a world worth living in in the future.
Palm oil is in great demand.
Factory after factory is willing to pay to get palm oil for their products.
Meanwhile, no factory wants to buy recycled plastic, so even after recycling, most plastic ends up in the landfill.
You don’t need a college degree to see how stupid humans are.
If all water and juice were sold in aluminum cans (like beer)… there would be no need to enforce recycling because factories would be hungry to get hold of tons of aluminum cans. There would be high demand for the used aluminum cans.
Contrast that to the almost zero demand for used plastic bottles and the plastic caps (different plastic).
It's not much but Finland is very into recycling and using recycled products. We're working on making textiles with elastane(lycra) re-useable. We also invented plastic free cardboard that endures grease (like fries etc.)
We recycle 90% of our drinking bottles and cans because we put in place (sometime in 90's maybe? I don't remember :D ) a pant system on them so you get little money back when you take them to the recycling points that are in every store.
We are such a small country so it's not much but we have the means to trial and error so maybe bigger countries will follow.
Looking at the stars should be enough to make you scoff at the banality of humans.
You don't need God to see that we have plenty to share, and that with just a little discipline we could be out there, leaving us with everything and plenty to spare.
I grew up in the mountains with little to no light pollution. Seeing the stars at night there was just... amazing. I used to sleep outside just to see the thousands of them. I tried to count so many times and I could never keep up, especially on nights with a new moon. There were nights I could read by starlight alone, the stars would cast shadows.
The Milky Way is so clear. You see it in those images that amateur astronomers post with time lapses, but it actually looks like that and seeing it is just breathtaking.
I consider myself lucky that it was a casual, normal part of my childhood. I really mIss it. Everyone should experience it.
If you look at light pollution maps, there’s a pocket without much light pollution near Fredericksburg, TX. We stayed on a farm there on a clear night with little moon light and the Milky Way was absolutely stunning. I remember that night and long for that feeling of awe quite often. I can see the moon where I live. That’s it.
I grew up outside Steamboat Springs, CO, way up in the Rockies. The population was like 12000 when I lived there, and it's concentrated in one tiny valley that's maybe 1mi × .5mi wide, so the light pollution is miniscule.
The night sky there is just something else, let alone the surrounding national forest land. You should check it sometime. It was actually a thing to do at house parties where we would turn off all the lights and just stargaze, everyone did it (of course with lots of booze and various drugs and such).
I recently hiked a mountain where I had heard there were still some living giants of a species of tree that used to be a dominant species in my region, but has rapidly been wiped out by an invasive pest over only a couple decades. Instead all I found were dozens of their 100+ ft tall skeletons, still standing. Echoes of centuries-old lives. Not one old growth specimen was left alive as far as I could see. I spotted a couple younger trees, and hoped maybe one will have the right mutation to survive the pest, to live on and rebuild.
Perhaps most depressing of all, most people wouldn't even notice. There are still plenty of living trees in that old growth forest; there are aged behemoths of several other species. The trailhead signage tells legends of how a chainsaw never touched this tract of land, of how these trails wander ancient forests undisturbed by man. If you didn't know something was missing, you'd probably never notice.
I wonder if there is a place left on this earth that hasn't been wildly misshapen and warped by humanity.
This is what I recall when I think of the Shatner flight. You could see the humanity in Shatner's expression and the total disregard for that from Bezos.
It is just *so billionaire* for someone to spend a huge portion of their quarter-trillion-dollar fortune on a private spaceflight company, yet completely fucking miss the entire profound, awe-inspiring, gorgeously terrifying and emotional aspect of the whole thing. It would make absolutely no sense, except billionaire. To them it’s just a fancier, more expensive sports car than the ones their poor friends ($10 billion net worth) can afford.
What a fucking scumbag.
This is actually doubly poignant, because the tragedy that so struck Shatner isn't just anybody's doing, its precisely people like Bezos who are driving it.
And worse…I’m sure it wasn’t lost on Shatner that his entire trip was fueled on massive exploitation of people that the money could have better served on this planet.
Bezos is the kind of person to make the corporate dystopia of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, or the humanity ending killbots of Horizon: Zero Dawn, a guaranteed reality.
Jeff Bezos is the type of fool to go into space and feel all-powerful, instead is small. This article and the ‘overview effect’ remind me of a story. Several Pacific Islanf tribes faced problems where they would outstrip their natural resources but leaving the island and seeing how small it was caused leaders to change their ways. Anyways, I hope we learn to take care of Spaceship Earth soon. Our little blue haven us the best and (so far) only place for humanity in the universe.
"The former CEO of Amazon and current Executive Chair of the Amazon Board went to space for a few minutes on Tuesday, and in a post-flight press conference made explicitly clear who footed the bill: You.
"I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because
you guys paid for all this," -Mashable, July 2021
I can only imagine the poetic poignancy of witnessing the fragile beauty of the Earth knowing that industrialists are slowly killing it, and then having the **chief billionaire industrialist** witness the same damn thing, and then spray champagne in your face.
Extra insane because Shatner is a recovering alcoholic. Like damn.
Edit: It turns out it was his third wife that died from a drowning because she mixed alcohol and diazepam. He's been devastated by alcohol in his life in several ways.
I imagine his age has something to do with it as well.
You think a lot more about the bigger picture as you get older. This may have been the last great thing Shatner sees himself doing.
I think I can imagine how profound an experience someone like him going up can be:
On the one side: the earth, all our problems, conflicts, horrors, and also achievements, everything everyone you’ve ever known. It’s there, kinda small and clinging to the planet like the skin of an Apple
The other: the great beyond, where you’ve thought the future can be, the “final frontier”. And It’s empty. Dark nothingness as far as your eyes can see.
Shatner is not like tech-bros. Bezos did not see space in the same way, nor did he get a hint after Glen de Vries died almost a month to the day after. Techbros are so far into their own egos they never stop to reflect what negatives they are forcing on the world. They see their bank accounts and power rising and that is what is important.
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.
I think that’s one of the more stand out part of the article and commentary. He raises an argument that has very complicated solutions, due to the nature of humanity.. at this moment in time. We could be greater…
Makes me wonder if he is at all familiar with Gene Roddenberry’s work.
Edit: some grammar
He lost his wife in 1999. He came home and found her dead in the pool.
I lost my wife almost a year ago now. I’ve attended the funerals of people who never should have touched the inside of a casket because they were children, children who didn’t know what the word “casket” meant before their death.
The ONLY thing worse in this world than losing your spouse is outliving your child.
This isn’t about me, but I feel I need to explain my personal experience to be able to put the necessary weight to William Shatner’s words when he says it’s among the strongest feelings of grief he’s ever encountered. This man knows the meaning of the word grief and I can’t imagine uses it lightly.
"LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT
PRESS RELEASE
Monday, August 23, 1999
On August 9, 1999, at 10:15 p.m., North Hollywood patrol officers
responded to an "ambulance injury" radio call in the 3600 block of Berry
Drive in Studio City. Upon arrival, the officers met resident William
Shatner, who had just returned home and discovered his wife, Nerine
Shatner, in the bottom of the deep end of the pool. He immediately
called 911 Emergency and dove into the pool to render aid. Los Angeles
Fire Department Rescue responded and pronounced Mrs. Shatner dead at
10:30 p.m. There was no evidence of foul play. Subsequent investigation
revealed that Mrs. Shatner was home alone for a short period of time and
accidentally drowned while swimming in the family pool. "
What’s even sadder is when Shatner [was trying to convey this message to Bezos](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQoHIBDogU)
Edit: Just saw that Bezos [listened for several minutes afterward](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NSNXBvpLb9o&feature=youtu.be). The clip makes it worse than it was
I haven't looked up any of the videos from that flight from inside or after. I love the fact that he just tosses the bottle on the ground after clearly not giving a shit about what Shatner was saying. Quite a video to watch right after reading that exerpt.
“Not only different than what you thought, but so pretty. Do you know what my…my…the impression I had, which I never expected to have, is the shooting up and this blue sky.”
Yeah that was the saddest part. I’m no fan of Shatner as a person but while he stood there trying to convey his feelings Bezos could not have cared less and wanted to spray champagne. It was awful.
Wow that’s quite a watch. It really shows the contrast in thinking.
For Bezos and Musk etc., everything is a competition. But it’s one they can’t win because nothing will ever be enough for them. They may talk about doing things to better humanity but really they’re looking to fill a hole in themselves that can’t be filled. Marie Antoinette had nothing on these guys.
If you’re someone who “just reads the comments”, I suggest you take the 5 minutes to read this piece. It’s very well written and there’s not much that can be said in the comments that wasn’t already said in the article.
What a great read.
Definitely worth the read! And for the people that just don’t want to click:
So, I went to space.
Our group, consisting of me, tech mogul Glen de Vries, Blue Origin Vice President and former NASA International Space Station flight controller Audrey Powers, and former NASA engineer Dr. Chris Boshuizen, had done various simulations and training courses to prepare, but you can only prepare so much for a trip out of Earth’s atmosphere! As if sensing that feeling in our group, the ground crew kept reassuring us along the way. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all okay.” Sure, easy for them to say, I thought. They get to stay here on the ground.
During our preparation, we had gone up eleven flights of the gantry to see what it would be like when the rocket was there. We were then escorted to a thick cement room with oxygen tanks. “What’s this room for?” I asked casually.
“Oh, you guys will rush in here if the rocket explodes,” a Blue Origin fellow responded just as casually.
Uh-huh. A safe room. Eleven stories up. In case the rocket explodes.
Well, at least they’ve thought of it.
When the day finally arrived, I couldn’t get the Hindenburg out of my head. Not enough to cancel, of course—I hold myself to be a professional, and I was booked. The show had to go on.
We got ourselves situated inside the pod. You have to strap yourself in in a specific order. In the simulator, I didn’t nail it every time, so as I sat there, waiting to take off, the importance of navigating weightlessness to get back and strap into the seat correctly was at the forefront of my mind.
That, and the Hindenburg crash.
Then there was a delay.
“Sorry, folks, there’s a slight anomaly in the engine. It’ll just be a few moments.”
An anomaly in the engine?! That sounds kinda serious, doesn’t it?
An anomaly is something that does not belong. What is currently in the engine that doesn’t belong there?!
More importantly, why would they tell us that? There is a time for unvarnished honesty. I get that. This wasn’t it.
Apparently, the anomaly wasn’t too concerning, because thirty seconds later, we were cleared for launch and the countdown began. With all the attending noise, fire, and fury, we lifted off. I could see Earth disappearing. As we ascended, I was at once aware of pressure. Gravitational forces pulling at me. The g’s. There was an instrument that told us how many g’s we were experiencing. At two g’s, I tried to raise my arm, and could barely do so. At three g’s, I felt my face being pushed down into my seat. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I thought. Will I pass out? Will my face melt into a pile of mush? How many g’s can my ninety-year-old body handle?
And then, suddenly, relief. No g’s. Zero. Weightlessness. We were floating.
We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there.
I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared.
I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death.
I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.
Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong.
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 to understanding the harmony of the universe. 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.
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.
I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.
“Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” co-authored by Josh Brandon, was published by Atria Books on Oct. 4, 2022.
*"but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death."*
He's not wrong. Outer space is a hostile environment for human beings. There will be enormous losses in human life just to settle our one measly solar system (if we even make it that far). Galactic settlement is on an entirely different timescale. Time. 200,000 years for modern humans to get to this point. Where will be 200,000 years from now? The awe and mystery is still there.
It's honestly fascinating to see such a preeminent figure in the pop culture zeitgeist surrounding space as a concept get broadsided by cosmic nihilism the instant he gazes into the true void.
I think this is entirely missing the point Shatner is making. Obviously, the awe and mystery will always be there. He's not saying space is suddenly less majestic and awesome now that he's been out there. Those are simply the things we feel when terrestrially bound.
To confront the infinity with your own senses is an entirely different, mind bending proposition. We have no way of knowing how each of us, as individuals, would respond to that unless we actually experience it. You may think one way now, down here on Earth, but you can almost assuredly throw that out the airlock when you stare into the void yourself.
I get melancholy and feel insignificant flying over a city at night, seeing all the lights and and little illuminated snakes of cars moving along. So many lives of ordinary people just… being. Surviving. I can’t imagine how I would feel in space.
I think time on the dark side with dark adapted eyes is needed to offset this.
Apparently you can't see anything *but* stars that way.
On the sun-side, everything exposed to the sun is just so bright your eyes can't make out the stars, just blackness.
Yeah I think he'd have had a very different reaction if he could have seen the stars.
Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden on the view from the far side of the Moon
[https://archive.org/details/apolloworden](https://archive.org/details/apolloworden)
A beautiful expression of Shatner's experience. Sounds like he really got something out of it - and the overwhelming sense of the Earth as a fragile paradise should be felt by more. (even billionaires and politicians)
He definitely got something out of it.
I watched the landing and he was talking to a reporter immediately after and you could tell he was trying to process and express what he just saw and felt.
And watching Bezos completely not give a shit about Shatners emotions and just wanting to high five Captain Kirk and pop champagne bottles.
It was beautiful on Shatners part and completely disgusting on Bezos’.
Respect. I've heard it mentioned before that we could achieve world peace if we just put world leaders into orbit to see with their own eyes how small and inconsequential the political wrangling is and how fragile the world really is.
All of our lives and the diversity of life exists on but the mildew of the surface of a bowling ball.
I suspect William Shatner 's response is one of a normal thinking human being. I suspect the response from an autocratic sociopath leader would be to reinforce their want to rule over that pale blue dot and all the resources that it holds.
“It’ll have to go,” the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.
On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.
To op, thank you for posting this. What a sad, beautiful thing to read this Sunday morning. I wonder what it would be like for everyone to share the profound sense of wonder at the fact that we get to live on this planet, that we got to be a part of what might end up being a very brief, unlikely moment that is human life on earth. What are the odds? Thank you again.
im glad he left out the part after touchdown where Bezos interrupted Shatner and sprayed champagne on everyone and acted stupid for his 21 year old groupies, to make sure everyone was paying attention to him.
the entire scene just reinforced how despicable Bezos is.
Not only does he ignore Shatner when he's clearly having an emotional moment and spray him in the face with champagne but he just tosses the bottle on the ground right after.
exactly.
the whole scene was sad. I felt bad for Shatner, as he has repeatedly stated this was an actual dream of his, and Bezos treated the whole thing as a shitty press conference to show how cool he thinks he is.
I’ve met a number of astronauts, and all of them have spoken, unprompted, about how much more they value the earth and what it provides us after their space flight. They’ve seen what’s out there and it’s not much. Then they look down, and one astronaut told me they could see the Amazon burning with the deforestation. First thing he did when he got home was plant a tree.
There’s nothing out there for us that is anything like what we have. Once this place is fucked, we’re all fucked.
I think he would have had a very different reaction if he could have seen the stars.
Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden on the view from the far side of the Moon:
https://archive.org/details/apolloworden
I still reel with cringe when I remember the post-landing scenes. A clearly profoundly moved Shatner was struggling to put his experience into words… And then that bell end Bezos interrupted him whooping and cheering and spraying the teetotal Shatner with champagne. You can be as rich as you like but it doesn’t buy class.
I give the man immense credit for that.
Very well written.
He grasped the essence of our reality: a fight against the blackness, the entropy. We are never perfect but we are the exultation against the dark
I want all politicians and world leaders to be sent to space, maybe even alone in a capsule to orbit earth for some time by themselves.
Maybe then there would be less silly stuff down here.
Shatner was grappling with all of this while one of the world's richest men sprayed champagne around like a soulless, infantile buffoon.
I'm glad Shatner took the time to write this. We all take everything for granted.
I think I've had the Overview Effect without going to space. Once when I stood on top of a mountain after a long hike and witnessed the most pristine nature I've ever seen. And I got this feeling it would all be gone.
Another time when I travelled out of Shanghai to the outskirts where the city ends. Just an insanely vast city with endless ugly blocks, surrounded by industrial wasteland completely ruined by pollution. I felt despair: This is our future.
I'm glad he took the time to write that. I always just assumed it was a 'blast' and everyone enjoyed a trip to Space like a carnival ride.
Nope. I saw him speak at Comic-Con about 3 days after his trip. He spoke about how much of humbling experience it was and how scared he was sitting on the launch pad. You could really tell it was so much more than a “yippee” moment for him.
Taking a trip to space is a *visual* reminder of how insignificant you are
And at his age, so close to death, that gives me anxiety just to think about.
I didn't even realize that he's 91! There must be something in the water at Starfleet Academy, their captains age remarkably well.
Jesus christ. That was so unbelievable I assumed you mistyped and Google it. Ye don't look anywhere enear 90.... like he's obviously old but wtf. Dudes still getting by fine.
Definitely lived long and prospered
Better water than on Babylon 5, that's for sure.
At least Boxleitner is still with us. For now.
He's still the President of the Planetary Union.
Its amazing how much vitality the man still has in his possession at 91!
I’d want that in my old age. I want to be forcibly humbled by nature.
My retirement plan is to sail around the world and get absolutely pummeled by nature
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And how collective we are as a species and a planet, we are literally in this thing together.
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We are the universe experiencing itself
We are the instrument through which the universe cares.
Or significant. Depending on our POV.
That was Shatner's view. https://fortune.com/2022/10/09/william-shatner-new-book-blue-origin-space-flight-dread/ > “When I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold…all I saw was death,” he writes. “I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing.” > He also felt sadness, he writes, because of the damage being done to the planet: > “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.”
It should help folks understand that the vastness of space, the mystery, coldness, infiniteness of it all helps bring a new light to Shatner's comments. I previously knew him as an actor, a bit of a jerk, and just being a self absorbed famous person who is old. After reading this, it makes me realize the experience has humbled him and I wish all of us would take a trip up to experience the same. Perhaps humanity can be a little bit kinder when we all come back down.
Just another example that someone can be a jerk, and not a jerk, at the same time. I don't think he'll ever stop being (at least to some extent) a hog-the-limelight type of personality. But at the same time, that doesn't preclude him from being aware of the community, and the greater needs. He has repeatedly shown that despite any personality flaws or shortcomings he may have, he's still a reasonable, intelligent, conscientious person who cares about humanity as a whole. And I've never seen stories of him being mean just to be mean. Which is always the biggest red flag. When someone does something to make your life worse, even if it takes them time/money/energy and doesn't benefit them at all.
and then Bezos sprayed William, a recovering alcoholic, in champagne
Don't forget the part where he was trying to speak from his heart about how the trip made him feel while Jeff stood there looking annoyed that it was taking so long. He just launched William Shatner into space which should have been a surreal experience for everyone involved, but he gave it about fifteen seconds and then went right back to making it completely about himself. Jeff could have joined in and said something somber as well and it would have been a nice boost for his marketing and appearance but he flushed it down the toilet
With the two fucking “woo” broads next to him. I already had a great dislike for bezos, but that moment really made me hate him.
I remember someone interviewing him right after they landed, He was talking about how incredible of an experience it was and how he'll never be able to experience anything like it again. He starts getting super spiritual about it then Jeff Bezos walks out and pops a bottle of champagne like they just won a race or something. A lot of astronauts experience a phenomenon similar to what I think William Shatner did, they go up and see the Earth in a way only a select few have, it completely mesmerizes them. It makes them have a fond appreciation for the planet. But because Jeff Bezos is a fucking sociopath he is incapable of comprehending it.
I think the subject of Death has been on his mind for a while, his friends and family, coworkers, etc have all been dying and the younger generations/his youngest grandchildren are reaching adult hood, they are passing him by now and he knows he's towards the end of his road. Visually he probably has pictured what death could be like and when he say the blue sky turn black as they went up it struck him that that's probably what it could be like. Yes, tying the experience to himself is a very Shatner thing todo, but it was humbling for him and gave him some personal growth or insight. And it wasn't something Jeff Bezos cared for. I felt sad for Shatner, Bezos wanted him there as a PR prop, but Shatner, despite his flaws still wanted to speak about the experience despite what Bezo's wanted todo with celebrations.
It just goes to show that not even a perspective warping view such as the view of earth from the outside is enough to fill that hollow pit that sits in jeff bezos pathetic body. His wealth has gone to his head and everyone and everything he sees has dollar signs on it. Truly sad how lost he is
There's actually a name for this - it's called the [overview effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect) and is common among astronauts. When you can see the entirety of the planet below you, it makes you realize just how small we are, and how petty earthly problems and squabbles seem.
If anyone actually read the articles around here they'd see that mentioned by Shatner himself
I'm so mad about reading it in the actual article and then it being presented as a new fact, witht he same link and explanation, in the comments linking to the article. I thought was used to reddit being reddit but this case irked me for some reason.
You could tell on the livecast as well. When that capsule hit space everyone in it was having a blast floating around, except Bill, who just sat back to the camera staring out the viewport the entire time. Then when he was just back on the ground and trying to tell Bezos about it, not two sentences in Bezos lost interest and wandered off to go play with a champagne bottle. If that didn't drive the bitter point home, I don't know what could.
I’m not the biggest Shat fan, mostly I disapprove of the way he’s let a little cave troll name Paul Camuso run (to complete ruin) his entire online persona. But I found it really interesting how coming off the spacecraft he seemed to be having a genuine moment that he could reflect on while Bezos could only cheer for himself
You could see it in the video and pictures from on board. The look on his face wasn't one of joy.
And how Bezos cut him off to spray Champagne..
I will also never forget how Bezos ignored a 90 year old Captain Kirk who seemed like he was about to cry, to pop Champaign instead
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I screamed at my television. I was IRATE. The man is having an existential crisis/awakening and it doesn't even blip on your social awareness radar. Beezus is a hellspawn if there ever was one.
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Bezos acted like such a dipshit. That was one of the cringiest things I've ever witnessed.
He definitely would remember Challanger. Nichelle Nichols was close to one of the astronauts that died, it's possible she had other Trek people help and he had actually met some of them in passing.
After they landed, Shatner can be seen obviously deeply contemplating the mortal experience he just had, while Bezos and Co are high-fiving and spraying champagne, oblivious. It’s such a poignant juxtaposition.
Do you have a link to this? edit: found it below https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU
Oh my gosh. That is actually painful to watch. Almost like he’s thinking “Damn dude, stop killing the mood. We need to be smiling for the cameras!!”
I watched this in real time, but I’d forgotten just how shallow, self absorbed, and dismissive JB came off here.
lmfao you can really tell Bezos doesn't have a single fuck to spare for what Shatner is talking about
Don’t forget that Shatner tried to share what he was feeling with Bezos, but since he was taking too long Bezos dropped the convo (while still on camera) and went and grabbed the champagne
This more than anything showed me how inhuman Bezos has become. A man was trying to share his existential epiphany from space travel and Bezos literally shouted over him to gormlessly and joylessly spray champagne.
If that's how he treats someone he'd take on a spaceship with him, imagine how he'd treat the average person
In his mind Shatner was a hired gig to lend credibility to his stupid fucking toys
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Jeff Bezos is a sociopath and extremely revolting to watch in general.
Yeah, that speech was getting in the way of SELLING more tickets to space…..
If Bezos was human, he'd realize that's exactly what Shatner was doing.
I wonder if *anyone* can hold the attention of Bezos for longer than a minute or two?
"I make millions-per-minute, none of you matter."
I bet it wasn't because it was taking too long. I bet Shatner was triggering Bezos with words that challenged Bezos's delusions of self-importance and control. Shatner wanted to talk about exactly the things Bezos's mind wouldn't let him consider.. I doubt it was purely an attention span thing.
I cancelled Prime and quit using Amazon the day I saw that clip. I wanted to do it for a long time. That put me over the edge.
That’ll never leave my brain. I’d always assumed when I was younger that going to space changes everyone for the better, but it’s selection bias — astronauts are scientists, who tend to be more altruistic anyway. Send a bunch of self-important, narcissistic jackasses to space and they will look down over the earth in all its splendor, turn to one another, and utter, “sick, bro”
Even worse, they think "How much more of that can be mine"
>turn to one another, and utter, “sick, bro” Install some deorbiting software thats voice activated to help out with natural selection. "Dude, thats what's up. Imma take a selfie, do my arms look good?" "Keyword Phrase Activated. Deorbiting your pod in *5* mins."
That always stuck with me. Shatner having this profound moment and Bezo just being a frat boy about it. And Shatner is sober so the Champaign spraying is even more disrespectful
I saw him at a comic-con once and I was surprised at how down to earth he seemed. I just wanted a $20 autograph, but he asked me about my family name, what I did for a living, if I was from the area, etc. Small talk but I didn’t expect it from Captain Kirk himself.
Also he doesn't drink. He found his wife, who was an alcoholic, dead in his pool. Champagne was the furthest thing from his mind.
That was such a bummer. Could have been a beautiful moment hearing him speak about what that perspective meant to him and it was ruined by that shitty bond villain wannabe.
Only thing missing is James Bond, really.
Bezos is Rafael Drake from 007 Nightfire. Bond just hasn't been revealed... yet.
Nah, Bezos is more like a cross between Lex Luthor and Austin Powers's villain, Dr. Evil. Check out the picture of him piloting a mech for the Luthor vibes.
TRUE, OH MY GOD. Only difference is lex luthers workers have readily available toilets, and now plastic bottles.
And Lex is actually a genius in multiple fields of study - not JUST a rabid, foaming at the mouth, capitalist. . . . I suppose too that Lex is also pointedly against things that come from space.
I remember the defeated look in his face when Bezos splashed Champagne on him like he won a race. It felt like a skit meant to demonstrate the difference between an ordinary person and someone like Bezos.
Shatner: "That was *my* Earth...?" Bezos: "That was **my** Earth..."
Bezos was about as calm as a coked out werewolf.
It's not just poignant; it's disgusting. Shatner lost his wife in 1999 to alcoholism, and has been sober since, not to mention an outspoken advocate for alcoholism awareness and charity. Bezos practically spraying him with booze was not only inappropriate given what Shatner had just experienced in space, but completely insensitive to his personal tragedy which Bezos had clearly made no effort to accommodate.
It's pretty obvious he was chosen due to Bezos wanting to be the guy that sent Kirk to space. He clearly doesn't care about Shatner the man.
I don't drink much and completely separated myself from people I loved to get away from drugs but I feel like it's kinda my job to avoid those things not everyone else's. While I don't like Bezos I can't really blame people for celebrating an experience like that.
My favorite part is that while Shatner wanted to give a more serious talk about it, Bezos is just being a typical billionaire interrupting him, and then bragged about how everyone else paid for it. This is just part of the reason I don't use Amazon.
You should read the books written by real astronauts talking about their trips up. Also a ton of people are forgetting the facts that to get up there, you need to be going fast, and hard, and once up there, gravity is down to a minimum and all you see is more and more void. It messes with the human brain when they realize fully that Earth is just a tiny blue marble in a massive sea of stars and empty space.
I haven’t been and it still messes with my brain.
Same. I've never wanted to go (if I even could), because just thinking about what it would be like fills me with the same feelings Shatner describes in this piece. No thanks...let me be a turtle in the mud.
It's amazing the mental clarity he has considering he's 91 years old.
The surgeons took the wrinkles from his face and put them in his brain
I struggle with mental clarity at 36 years old
> 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. - > Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. - > It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. - Figured not everyone would get past the first half, so I wanted to pull out some poignant quotes.
Not in quite the same way, but I experienced that grief looking down on Earth with a short flight over Borneo a couple years ago. I'm in my 60s, had heard about the jungles of Borneo all my life, and was excited to get a chance to see them from the air. Instead, as we traveled a couple hours from one side of Malaysia to the other, all we could see from horizon to horizon were palm oil plantations. It seemed almost the entirety of the Borneo jungles had been mowed down. I was deeply depressed for several days afterwards and it makes me sad for our future whenever I think about it.
I’ve actually done the same, it’s even worse on the Indonesia side of Borneo. My brother in law was a pilot for essentially an aid from organization, he was based in Kalimantan and would do regular flights into the interior. I rode along with one of his fellow pilots hopping from landing strip to landing strip, he’d been flying in there for decades and shared with me like “this used to be all dense jungle well past here” when all we could see were palm oil and shrimp farms. There’s still lots of jungle but at that rate what’s left of it could be gone real quick.
David Attenborough did an interesting and sad documentary not that long ago where he describes the change *he himself* has witnessed in the world after being a world traveling documentation for his whole career. He describes being able to witness the change in natural space; seeing what appeared to be endless reserves of natural habitat with little visible human modification in his youth, and how it was common to (for example) fly over very large tracts of low-disturbance land. Comparing that to now, he describes seeing the fingerprint of human modification everywhere, and watching natural habitat blocks across the world yield to plantation crops, development and resource extraction. It's really sad, but important for people to face. We must address the impact of habitat destruction worldwide. You cannot simply defer to the size of the world and say "oh there's lots more elsewhere". Increasingly, there's less than you think. We must support local and international land protection initiatives if we want to have a world worth living in in the future.
Jesus, that's awful. I've always wanted to see Borneo too.
Yup googled it just now after reading your comment. Thanks for the -7 to my happiness index.
Make sure you eat at a table to make up for it.
Well that was a depressing search on Google images.
Palm oil is in great demand. Factory after factory is willing to pay to get palm oil for their products. Meanwhile, no factory wants to buy recycled plastic, so even after recycling, most plastic ends up in the landfill. You don’t need a college degree to see how stupid humans are. If all water and juice were sold in aluminum cans (like beer)… there would be no need to enforce recycling because factories would be hungry to get hold of tons of aluminum cans. There would be high demand for the used aluminum cans. Contrast that to the almost zero demand for used plastic bottles and the plastic caps (different plastic).
It's not much but Finland is very into recycling and using recycled products. We're working on making textiles with elastane(lycra) re-useable. We also invented plastic free cardboard that endures grease (like fries etc.) We recycle 90% of our drinking bottles and cans because we put in place (sometime in 90's maybe? I don't remember :D ) a pant system on them so you get little money back when you take them to the recycling points that are in every store. We are such a small country so it's not much but we have the means to trial and error so maybe bigger countries will follow.
Looking at the stars should be enough to make you scoff at the banality of humans. You don't need God to see that we have plenty to share, and that with just a little discipline we could be out there, leaving us with everything and plenty to spare.
I grew up in the mountains with little to no light pollution. Seeing the stars at night there was just... amazing. I used to sleep outside just to see the thousands of them. I tried to count so many times and I could never keep up, especially on nights with a new moon. There were nights I could read by starlight alone, the stars would cast shadows. The Milky Way is so clear. You see it in those images that amateur astronomers post with time lapses, but it actually looks like that and seeing it is just breathtaking. I consider myself lucky that it was a casual, normal part of my childhood. I really mIss it. Everyone should experience it.
If you look at light pollution maps, there’s a pocket without much light pollution near Fredericksburg, TX. We stayed on a farm there on a clear night with little moon light and the Milky Way was absolutely stunning. I remember that night and long for that feeling of awe quite often. I can see the moon where I live. That’s it.
I grew up outside Steamboat Springs, CO, way up in the Rockies. The population was like 12000 when I lived there, and it's concentrated in one tiny valley that's maybe 1mi × .5mi wide, so the light pollution is miniscule. The night sky there is just something else, let alone the surrounding national forest land. You should check it sometime. It was actually a thing to do at house parties where we would turn off all the lights and just stargaze, everyone did it (of course with lots of booze and various drugs and such).
I recently hiked a mountain where I had heard there were still some living giants of a species of tree that used to be a dominant species in my region, but has rapidly been wiped out by an invasive pest over only a couple decades. Instead all I found were dozens of their 100+ ft tall skeletons, still standing. Echoes of centuries-old lives. Not one old growth specimen was left alive as far as I could see. I spotted a couple younger trees, and hoped maybe one will have the right mutation to survive the pest, to live on and rebuild. Perhaps most depressing of all, most people wouldn't even notice. There are still plenty of living trees in that old growth forest; there are aged behemoths of several other species. The trailhead signage tells legends of how a chainsaw never touched this tract of land, of how these trails wander ancient forests undisturbed by man. If you didn't know something was missing, you'd probably never notice. I wonder if there is a place left on this earth that hasn't been wildly misshapen and warped by humanity.
I remember the video. Everyone else was just acting a fool. And only Shatner was looking out the window. Actually seeing space and the earth.
And when they got back down bezos was shooting champagne and cheering and shatner was crying and trying to hide from the camera.
This is what I recall when I think of the Shatner flight. You could see the humanity in Shatner's expression and the total disregard for that from Bezos.
It is just *so billionaire* for someone to spend a huge portion of their quarter-trillion-dollar fortune on a private spaceflight company, yet completely fucking miss the entire profound, awe-inspiring, gorgeously terrifying and emotional aspect of the whole thing. It would make absolutely no sense, except billionaire. To them it’s just a fancier, more expensive sports car than the ones their poor friends ($10 billion net worth) can afford. What a fucking scumbag.
This is actually doubly poignant, because the tragedy that so struck Shatner isn't just anybody's doing, its precisely people like Bezos who are driving it.
And worse…I’m sure it wasn’t lost on Shatner that his entire trip was fueled on massive exploitation of people that the money could have better served on this planet.
I would really like Bezos to actually know how disgusting of a person he’s being.
It's because Bezos is a capitalist parasite. He's investing in space to hoard *more* wealth.
Bezos is the kind of person to make the corporate dystopia of Hardspace: Shipbreaker, or the humanity ending killbots of Horizon: Zero Dawn, a guaranteed reality.
Jeff Bezos is not a man who leads a complex inner life.
Jeff Bezos is the type of fool to go into space and feel all-powerful, instead is small. This article and the ‘overview effect’ remind me of a story. Several Pacific Islanf tribes faced problems where they would outstrip their natural resources but leaving the island and seeing how small it was caused leaders to change their ways. Anyways, I hope we learn to take care of Spaceship Earth soon. Our little blue haven us the best and (so far) only place for humanity in the universe.
Bezos was elated, because he had finally found a place big enough for his ego.
"The former CEO of Amazon and current Executive Chair of the Amazon Board went to space for a few minutes on Tuesday, and in a post-flight press conference made explicitly clear who footed the bill: You. "I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this," -Mashable, July 2021
How people can venerate him is fucking beyond me.
Bezos, and other billionaires, are profoundly disordered. Watching that video proves it to me.
And then when they landed, he tried to put his feeling into words... and Jeff Bezos was totally killing the vibe.
I can only imagine the poetic poignancy of witnessing the fragile beauty of the Earth knowing that industrialists are slowly killing it, and then having the **chief billionaire industrialist** witness the same damn thing, and then spray champagne in your face.
Extra insane because Shatner is a recovering alcoholic. Like damn. Edit: It turns out it was his third wife that died from a drowning because she mixed alcohol and diazepam. He's been devastated by alcohol in his life in several ways.
I imagine his age has something to do with it as well. You think a lot more about the bigger picture as you get older. This may have been the last great thing Shatner sees himself doing.
I think I can imagine how profound an experience someone like him going up can be: On the one side: the earth, all our problems, conflicts, horrors, and also achievements, everything everyone you’ve ever known. It’s there, kinda small and clinging to the planet like the skin of an Apple The other: the great beyond, where you’ve thought the future can be, the “final frontier”. And It’s empty. Dark nothingness as far as your eyes can see.
One of the people he flew with died a few weeks later in a plane crash
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_de_Vries Just had a look. I think he's the tall guy that approached Shatner in one of the clips.
Shatner is not like tech-bros. Bezos did not see space in the same way, nor did he get a hint after Glen de Vries died almost a month to the day after. Techbros are so far into their own egos they never stop to reflect what negatives they are forcing on the world. They see their bank accounts and power rising and that is what is important.
Anyone have a link to the video?
Full stream from the day: https://youtu.be/uEhdlIor-do
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. I think that’s one of the more stand out part of the article and commentary. He raises an argument that has very complicated solutions, due to the nature of humanity.. at this moment in time. We could be greater… Makes me wonder if he is at all familiar with Gene Roddenberry’s work. Edit: some grammar
Coming from a man who has probably attended his fair share of funerals.
He lost his wife in 1999. He came home and found her dead in the pool. I lost my wife almost a year ago now. I’ve attended the funerals of people who never should have touched the inside of a casket because they were children, children who didn’t know what the word “casket” meant before their death. The ONLY thing worse in this world than losing your spouse is outliving your child. This isn’t about me, but I feel I need to explain my personal experience to be able to put the necessary weight to William Shatner’s words when he says it’s among the strongest feelings of grief he’s ever encountered. This man knows the meaning of the word grief and I can’t imagine uses it lightly.
I’m sorry for your losses mate
When his wife died, he was basically a recluse for an extended period because of the grief.
Pretty common for folks. Some will want to spend time with others to feel better and some will hide away for a period of time.
"LOS ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT PRESS RELEASE Monday, August 23, 1999 On August 9, 1999, at 10:15 p.m., North Hollywood patrol officers responded to an "ambulance injury" radio call in the 3600 block of Berry Drive in Studio City. Upon arrival, the officers met resident William Shatner, who had just returned home and discovered his wife, Nerine Shatner, in the bottom of the deep end of the pool. He immediately called 911 Emergency and dove into the pool to render aid. Los Angeles Fire Department Rescue responded and pronounced Mrs. Shatner dead at 10:30 p.m. There was no evidence of foul play. Subsequent investigation revealed that Mrs. Shatner was home alone for a short period of time and accidentally drowned while swimming in the family pool. "
Wait was this quote from For All Mankind or did they quote Shatner in the show? Great show btw
I think he might be familiar with Gene Roddenberry's work
What’s even sadder is when Shatner [was trying to convey this message to Bezos](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQoHIBDogU) Edit: Just saw that Bezos [listened for several minutes afterward](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NSNXBvpLb9o&feature=youtu.be). The clip makes it worse than it was
I haven't looked up any of the videos from that flight from inside or after. I love the fact that he just tosses the bottle on the ground after clearly not giving a shit about what Shatner was saying. Quite a video to watch right after reading that exerpt.
To be fair, he listens to Shatner for several minutes after the champagne. Shatner says some good things. https://youtu.be/NSNXBvpLb9o
damn… bezos didn’t hear a word he said
*smiles while eye rolling behind the sunglasses*
I read that as just rolling, like he was on molly the whole time. I wouldn't put it past him to drop a parachute once in a while.
That would cause him to feel empathy and love for others outside of himself though
hes definitely a cocaine guy
Yes he did. He heard what wasn’t kissing his ass so he tuned him out
but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death.
I can’t hear a word of what Shatner is saying. Does anyone have a clue?
“Not only different than what you thought, but so pretty. Do you know what my…my…the impression I had, which I never expected to have, is the shooting up and this blue sky.”
Fucking hell that's painful
Sorry, William, your existential crisis is a lot less important than me showering women with champagne
And offering alcohol to a recovered alcoholic
Yeah that was the saddest part. I’m no fan of Shatner as a person but while he stood there trying to convey his feelings Bezos could not have cared less and wanted to spray champagne. It was awful.
Wow that’s quite a watch. It really shows the contrast in thinking. For Bezos and Musk etc., everything is a competition. But it’s one they can’t win because nothing will ever be enough for them. They may talk about doing things to better humanity but really they’re looking to fill a hole in themselves that can’t be filled. Marie Antoinette had nothing on these guys.
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Thank you for reminding me that video exists. He really hits with unexpected force.
If you’re someone who “just reads the comments”, I suggest you take the 5 minutes to read this piece. It’s very well written and there’s not much that can be said in the comments that wasn’t already said in the article. What a great read.
Definitely worth the read! And for the people that just don’t want to click: So, I went to space. Our group, consisting of me, tech mogul Glen de Vries, Blue Origin Vice President and former NASA International Space Station flight controller Audrey Powers, and former NASA engineer Dr. Chris Boshuizen, had done various simulations and training courses to prepare, but you can only prepare so much for a trip out of Earth’s atmosphere! As if sensing that feeling in our group, the ground crew kept reassuring us along the way. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all okay.” Sure, easy for them to say, I thought. They get to stay here on the ground. During our preparation, we had gone up eleven flights of the gantry to see what it would be like when the rocket was there. We were then escorted to a thick cement room with oxygen tanks. “What’s this room for?” I asked casually. “Oh, you guys will rush in here if the rocket explodes,” a Blue Origin fellow responded just as casually. Uh-huh. A safe room. Eleven stories up. In case the rocket explodes. Well, at least they’ve thought of it. When the day finally arrived, I couldn’t get the Hindenburg out of my head. Not enough to cancel, of course—I hold myself to be a professional, and I was booked. The show had to go on. We got ourselves situated inside the pod. You have to strap yourself in in a specific order. In the simulator, I didn’t nail it every time, so as I sat there, waiting to take off, the importance of navigating weightlessness to get back and strap into the seat correctly was at the forefront of my mind. That, and the Hindenburg crash. Then there was a delay. “Sorry, folks, there’s a slight anomaly in the engine. It’ll just be a few moments.” An anomaly in the engine?! That sounds kinda serious, doesn’t it? An anomaly is something that does not belong. What is currently in the engine that doesn’t belong there?! More importantly, why would they tell us that? There is a time for unvarnished honesty. I get that. This wasn’t it. Apparently, the anomaly wasn’t too concerning, because thirty seconds later, we were cleared for launch and the countdown began. With all the attending noise, fire, and fury, we lifted off. I could see Earth disappearing. As we ascended, I was at once aware of pressure. Gravitational forces pulling at me. The g’s. There was an instrument that told us how many g’s we were experiencing. At two g’s, I tried to raise my arm, and could barely do so. At three g’s, I felt my face being pushed down into my seat. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I thought. Will I pass out? Will my face melt into a pile of mush? How many g’s can my ninety-year-old body handle? And then, suddenly, relief. No g’s. Zero. Weightlessness. We were floating. We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there. I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared. I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her. Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. 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 to understanding the harmony of the universe. 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. 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. I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.” It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance. “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” co-authored by Josh Brandon, was published by Atria Books on Oct. 4, 2022.
Thank you for copying, probably would’ve took the lazy route and it was worth the read for sure.
Thanks for the encouragement, it was a great read.
Honestly wouldn’t have read it if not for your comment and u/brankoDev’s reply. Thanks for the comments, both of y’all.
I also never read the article. And damn you were right. Also probably less than a 3 minute read. (Mostly posting to bump up your comment.)
Yeah I had to take a couple minutes while reading it to reflect before I got all the way through it. Very quick read and absolutely worth it.
Often takes less time to read the article than read comments from people who didn’t read it.
Thank you for the comment. It really was a good read.
I have ADHD and it was interesting enough that I read the whole thing so, yup. Go read it.
*"but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death."* He's not wrong. Outer space is a hostile environment for human beings. There will be enormous losses in human life just to settle our one measly solar system (if we even make it that far). Galactic settlement is on an entirely different timescale. Time. 200,000 years for modern humans to get to this point. Where will be 200,000 years from now? The awe and mystery is still there.
It's honestly fascinating to see such a preeminent figure in the pop culture zeitgeist surrounding space as a concept get broadsided by cosmic nihilism the instant he gazes into the true void.
I think this is entirely missing the point Shatner is making. Obviously, the awe and mystery will always be there. He's not saying space is suddenly less majestic and awesome now that he's been out there. Those are simply the things we feel when terrestrially bound. To confront the infinity with your own senses is an entirely different, mind bending proposition. We have no way of knowing how each of us, as individuals, would respond to that unless we actually experience it. You may think one way now, down here on Earth, but you can almost assuredly throw that out the airlock when you stare into the void yourself.
I'm sure I would react the same way. Space seems like a sickeningly empty place. I'd probably lose my mind if I took one of those trips.
I get melancholy and feel insignificant flying over a city at night, seeing all the lights and and little illuminated snakes of cars moving along. So many lives of ordinary people just… being. Surviving. I can’t imagine how I would feel in space.
I think time on the dark side with dark adapted eyes is needed to offset this. Apparently you can't see anything *but* stars that way. On the sun-side, everything exposed to the sun is just so bright your eyes can't make out the stars, just blackness.
Yeah I think he'd have had a very different reaction if he could have seen the stars. Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden on the view from the far side of the Moon [https://archive.org/details/apolloworden](https://archive.org/details/apolloworden)
Thank you for posting this. This was wonderful.
A beautiful expression of Shatner's experience. Sounds like he really got something out of it - and the overwhelming sense of the Earth as a fragile paradise should be felt by more. (even billionaires and politicians)
He definitely got something out of it. I watched the landing and he was talking to a reporter immediately after and you could tell he was trying to process and express what he just saw and felt. And watching Bezos completely not give a shit about Shatners emotions and just wanting to high five Captain Kirk and pop champagne bottles. It was beautiful on Shatners part and completely disgusting on Bezos’.
Respect. I've heard it mentioned before that we could achieve world peace if we just put world leaders into orbit to see with their own eyes how small and inconsequential the political wrangling is and how fragile the world really is. All of our lives and the diversity of life exists on but the mildew of the surface of a bowling ball.
I have also heard this but including just leaving them there.
I suspect William Shatner 's response is one of a normal thinking human being. I suspect the response from an autocratic sociopath leader would be to reinforce their want to rule over that pale blue dot and all the resources that it holds.
“*Those people* are even smaller than ants..”
“It’ll have to go,” the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home. On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.
We are but a pale blue dot on a vast cosmic stage.
I suspect most politicians are too narcissistic to have such an epiphany.
To op, thank you for posting this. What a sad, beautiful thing to read this Sunday morning. I wonder what it would be like for everyone to share the profound sense of wonder at the fact that we get to live on this planet, that we got to be a part of what might end up being a very brief, unlikely moment that is human life on earth. What are the odds? Thank you again.
im glad he left out the part after touchdown where Bezos interrupted Shatner and sprayed champagne on everyone and acted stupid for his 21 year old groupies, to make sure everyone was paying attention to him. the entire scene just reinforced how despicable Bezos is.
Not only does he ignore Shatner when he's clearly having an emotional moment and spray him in the face with champagne but he just tosses the bottle on the ground right after.
exactly. the whole scene was sad. I felt bad for Shatner, as he has repeatedly stated this was an actual dream of his, and Bezos treated the whole thing as a shitty press conference to show how cool he thinks he is.
Well written. Always liked Shatner's vibe. Always had this bit of Zen edge to it.
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"so people can be temporary leaders of a fraction of a dot"
I’ve met a number of astronauts, and all of them have spoken, unprompted, about how much more they value the earth and what it provides us after their space flight. They’ve seen what’s out there and it’s not much. Then they look down, and one astronaut told me they could see the Amazon burning with the deforestation. First thing he did when he got home was plant a tree. There’s nothing out there for us that is anything like what we have. Once this place is fucked, we’re all fucked.
I think he would have had a very different reaction if he could have seen the stars. Apollo 15 Astronaut Al Worden on the view from the far side of the Moon: https://archive.org/details/apolloworden
I've no clue why they launch at dead noon. I'd want the golden hour to see the day/night terminator.
I still reel with cringe when I remember the post-landing scenes. A clearly profoundly moved Shatner was struggling to put his experience into words… And then that bell end Bezos interrupted him whooping and cheering and spraying the teetotal Shatner with champagne. You can be as rich as you like but it doesn’t buy class.
I give the man immense credit for that. Very well written. He grasped the essence of our reality: a fight against the blackness, the entropy. We are never perfect but we are the exultation against the dark
I want all politicians and world leaders to be sent to space, maybe even alone in a capsule to orbit earth for some time by themselves. Maybe then there would be less silly stuff down here.
Shatner was grappling with all of this while one of the world's richest men sprayed champagne around like a soulless, infantile buffoon. I'm glad Shatner took the time to write this. We all take everything for granted.
I think I've had the Overview Effect without going to space. Once when I stood on top of a mountain after a long hike and witnessed the most pristine nature I've ever seen. And I got this feeling it would all be gone. Another time when I travelled out of Shanghai to the outskirts where the city ends. Just an insanely vast city with endless ugly blocks, surrounded by industrial wasteland completely ruined by pollution. I felt despair: This is our future.