Shatner: Trip to space 'felt like a funeral'

[bigtree]

Last edited Sun Oct 9, 2022, 11:43 AM - Edit history (2)

graham starr @GrahamStarr 1h
William Shatner on his Blue Origin flight to space: "It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered." https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldly-go-excerpt-1235395113/ *





*fixed link

[cilla4progress]

1. I just listened to him on John Fugelsangs pod -

He's an interesting person - a seeker.

Good man.

At 90 years old (89, I think, when he went) he is oldest person to go to space!

[niyad]

2. . . .

[keithbvadu2]

3. Spock's funeral

[Trueblue1968]

72. watching this, i COULD NOT STOP CRYING. i grew up with this show. my favorite genre is SCI Fi

i love all these women and men for making the future ours

GOD bless and keep them all.

[Bucky]

4. What downer of a take. Geeze...

Maybe Bezos shoulda taken Martin Landau from Space 1999 instead

[certainot]

8. my dad went to school with landau....

[ShazzieB]

12. Well, there's one problem with that.

Labdau died in 2017.

[Bucky]

23. NOOOO000oooooo...!

Okay, Plan B then (and I apologize for my sexism before). Obviously he should have taken Barbara Bain along for the ride...

[Siwsan]

61. My brother was his driver during the filming of one of the Star Trek movies

The relationship started off rough but eventually Shatner stopped being a jerk and they got along great. Shatner wrote him a nice letter of recommendation.

[Earth-shine]

18. Space 1999 was the coolest show with the worst, most derivative plots.

I loved the station, the eagles, the uniforms, the laser guns, the comlocks ... but not the stories.

[IbogaProject]

52. Yes

Fun idea bad execution.

[Magoo48]

31. The truth of humanity's ongoing destruction of our wonderous home is indeed the ultimate downer.

[Probatim]

50. I saw him after the landing and everyone was jumping around like they won the Super Bowl.

I think it bothered him that they were so cavalier about what they just did.

Just my take.

[Bucky]

60. The truth is, it was pretty fucking impressive.

I won't say it wasn't a bit wasteful or that the funds couldn't have been put to better use elsewhere.

But dang, they went into low earth orbit on a rocket they built themselves*



=============

*Okay, not totally themselves. A lot of public spending underwrote the costs of the technologies they applied. But we all stand on the shoulder of dead giants

[Wibly]

63. Opposite

I thought his comment was very moving and intelligent.
Guess it is just a matter of perspective.
Truth can hurt, and internally we may consider that a "downer" but it does not make it any less true.
I think the right guy was taken to space.

[Saoirse9]

69. I agree

That's a thoughtful person's take. I'm mildly surprised that Shatner felt this way but I appreciate him for expressing it.

[soldierant]

81. Agree 100%

I honestly didn't know he had it in him. But I'm certainly glad he did.

And I think the audience Captain Kirk will get for those thoughts is the right audience - perhaps not needing it as much as some do who would not listen to anyone, but capable of being inspired by it.

[tinrobot]

77. I found it insightful. It's not really about outer space, it's about Earth.

It's a reminder that this precious planet is the only place in the endless void of space that we can survive.

Reminds me a little of Sagan's pale blue dot quote.

https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

[renate]

5. That's kind of beautiful, though

For all its horrible and heartbreaking flaws, Earth is teeming with life and warmth. It’s a very valuable perspective that I think only someone who actually cares about preserving what we have could feel.

I hadn’t realized he was this kind of person, so this is a really interesting and moving insight into his character. I’m glad he’s speaking about this instead of keeping that emotion to himself.

[iluvtennis]

6. + agree. n/t

[Hekate]

10. This

[Hortensis]

20. Yes. "contrast between the vicious coldness of space and warm nurturing of earth.''

That awareness is something special to share. Grief at the extinction of flora and fauna that we see happening is something we can all feel right here.

Toward the end of summer this year the butterfly bush outside our kitchen finally had 4 Monarch butterflies and 1 little orange one busy at it. It's always been alive with butterflies, bees and other flying insects all summer. Almost no bees either, there or at the other plants once alive with them.

We saw none of the Cloudless Sulfur yellow butterflies that have always been so beautifully abundant, and we wondered if they were already effectively extinct in our area. Then in September a very small number that had apparently migrated farther north flitted through on their way south for the winter. We don't know if we'll see any next year.

My comfort, and it's real, is that people are collecting genetic material. We need to allow the world to be one they can live in again.

[IbogaProject]

58. Butterfly bush aren't the best

Not to be critical but to help you maybe plant better plants for butterflies and other pollinators. There are better plants for pollinators. Milkweed is the proper food and companion species for Monarchs.

https://natlands.org/why-you-should-never-plant-a-butterfly-bush-again/

https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/blog/invasive-species-spotlight-truth-about-butterfly-bush#:~:text=Butterfly%20Bush%20benefits%20pollinators%20but,caterpillar%20eats%20Butterfly%20Bush%20leaves.

[Hortensis]

64. Thanks, IbogaProject. Besides diverse plantings, we have open

meadow of natives, including a lot of native milkweed in the moister area, plus native woods and a glade that Asclepias tuberosa's spread to cover. The butterfly bush is by the house for pretty all summer while drawing some close to enjoy, and we've never had a problem with invasiveness.

The situation is tragically the same out in our other areas, though.

[IbogaProject]

66. Whew

I'm glad to hear. I hope the info helps others.

[Hortensis]

70. :). As your links say too.

There are so many plants we can help struggling nature along with.

[cilla4progress]

65. Catch the Fugelsang interview of him if you can.

I am buying his newest book for my H. "Boldly Go."

[uponit7771]

28. +1

[calimary]

40. I did not expect such deep thinking from him.

He has been a cocky little brat in earlier days.

Maybe it’s the impact of the passage of time, and how you suddenly realize there are more days behind you than in front of you. Your physical self starts to falter and manifest its own fallibility. Youth can make one feel utterly invincible. Time starts sanding that down as the years pile up behind you. As I approach “Year 70”, I find myself doing a lot of introspection. Lots of thoughts of what one leaves behind. Seems to me that’s what continues to speak for/about us after we’re gone.

[Amaryllis]

44. Was Shatner a cocky little brat or just the character he played? The young Kirk was certainly cocky

[calimary]

47. Hard to say. From observation I'd guess the former.

At least early-on. Almost as though he was first to realize what a pop-culture “hero” he is.

[csziggy]

54. Shatner was the perfect avatar for Tim Allen's character in Galaxy Quest

[calimary]

56. MAN did I love that movie!

Definite Shatner send-up.

[Amaryllis]

67. I love it too. But i think the send up was not limited to Shatner. They took on the everything about

the show and the fans.

[calimary]

82. Definitely not limited to Shatner.

And Alan Rickman! Good Grief, what an outstanding actor - so versatile, so brilliant in so many different roles and disguises. I’m surprised he didn’t win many more acting awards, including an Oscar.

[Random Boomer]

78. Both

Most of the cast of Star Trek could not stand the man.

[certainot]

7. well done shatner

[C Moon]

9. His reaction after getting back on land. This is amazing.

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/william-shatner-blue-origin-space-flight/

[Hekate]

11. How very poignant, Mr Shatner

[Dirty Socialist]

13. Can you hear me Captain Kirk

Your circuit’s dead. There’s something wrong.

[speak easy]

16. 'tell my wife I love her very much, she knows'

[orangecrush]

43. This

[Lithos]

14. Not a fan of Shatner

However, I understand this viewpoint and totally respect it.

To have enough perspective of age and distance, his comment should not be surprising. The garden is here. Space, while it has its huge potential, is always the long play.

[Bucky]

24. He was a flawed, somewhat damaged man in his earlier years.

But I have to give him props for a fresh take on space travel. It's a point with more utility than the usual "Wow, we're all just one blue marble" that you get from the scientists and engineers that have been going up into orbit for the last six decades.

I mean years ago they used to say NASA should be sending poets and artists up into space too. Well, The Shat is a writer and a dreamer; and for all his flaws he did make a pretty damn important point.

[calimary]

48. "The Shat"! Gotta say, I do love that!

[Demobrat]

15. I can totally feel him.

Light, life, and warmth vs endless darkness. Doesn’t surprise me at all.

[Earth-shine]

19. Cap't Kirk was my number one boyhood hero.

Spock was number two.

[Celerity]

21. Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk?

Label: Rough Trade – RTSO 4
Format:
Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Single, Allied Pressing
Country: UK
Released: 15 Dec 1979
Genre: Rock
Style: New Wave, Punk

[Earth-shine]

22. Ha Ha. That song is positively adorable. Never heard it before.

It's certainly better than any album Shatner made.

[Celerity]

25. another 70's punk take on you post, The Stranglers - No More Heroes (TopPop) (1977) (HD)

lol, they totally take the piss on the Dutch national rock telly show (TopPop)

Label: United Artists Records – UP 36300
Format:
Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Single, Red Text On Labels, 4 Prong Centre
Country: UK
Released: 1977
Genre: Rock
Style: Punk

[Kid Berwyn]

26. More to the guy than the script says.

He got a fine tan shirt with an emblem on the chest…

[Buckeye_Democrat]

27. Shatner quote after peering into space:

"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."

Accurate! And I suspect that we may never travel between the stars, as sci-fi writers have romanticized, leaving behind our closest star (the Sun).

https://www.science.org/content/article/us-lawmaker-orders-nasa-plan-trip-alpha-centauri-100th-anniversary-moon-landing
Many scientists consider the idea of interstellar travel to be still firmly in the domain of science fiction. That's principally because of the vast distances involved. Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light-years away, or nearly 40 trillion kilometers. The fastest spacecraft so far launched into space, the NASA-Germany Helios probes, traveled at 250,000 kilometers per hour. At that speed, it would take the probes 18,000 years to reach the nearest star to the sun. To get there in anywhere close to a human lifetime, spacecraft will need to travel a substantial fraction of light-speed—10% would get a craft to Alpha Centauri in 44 years.

A major problem with traveling a significant percentage of the speed of light, however, is that colliding with even a tiny speck of dust would be like a nuclear explosion.

Force fields, like in Star Trek? Yeah, well, that might forever remain in the realm of fiction too. We can only do what physics allows! It's possible that no other intelligent life in the Universe, no matter how advanced, can ever achieve such feats either!

[keithbvadu2]

30. We might not be in great shape once we got there.

There have been some articles about long-term space travel and its effects on the human body. Our bodies are designed / acclimated to Earth conditions. Our eyesight would deteriorate significantly. The space station has shown we would lose muscle tone. We might not be in great shape once we got there.

[Liberal In Texas]

51. I think we're going to find that any long-term trips are going to

have to be in a ship with 1G gravity, an artificial atmosphere and an Earth-like ecology.

Perhaps inside a spinning cylinder. Kind of like Arthur C. Clarke's Rama.

[keithbvadu2]

62. 'and an Earth-like ecology'... That's going to be a tough one.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jul/13/spaceship-earth-arizona-biosphere-2-lockdown

Eight go mad in Arizona: how a lockdown experiment went horribly wrong

In the 1990s, a troupe of hippies spent two years sealed inside a dome called Biosphere 2. They ended up starving and gasping for breath. As a new documentary Spaceship Earth tells their story, we meet the ‘biospherians’

-------------
At least they could open the hatch and come back to earth.

Our third rock from the sun is a finely tuned machine.

[Scrivener7]

29. That's really very beautiful. Thanks for bringing it here.

[3Hotdogs]

32. Space travel for me? As a kid, .... wonderful idea. Now, I know I couldn't do it.

Looking out of a space capsule window and seeing "black" space. I couldn't do it.

[malaise]

33. Profound and beautiful

Rec

[Peacetrain]

79. That was the first word that came to me after reading the op

Profound!

[malaise]

80. Indeed

[judesedit]

34. It could be quite a wake up call. Leaving "home" in such an unconventional way.

The dread of being lost or having an accident, terrifying. Even if you thought you could handle it originally. Just a frightening plane ride or ship in the middle of the ocean with no land in site give people the wish for feet firmly planted on the ground. To see Earth from that standpoint, the blues and greens of life should open anybody's eyes. Imho.

[karin_sj]

35. Very profound

I didn't think he was a such a deep thinker, but I'm glad he shared his thoughts. Too bad the billionaires who spend megabucks to go to space to satisfy their egos (and have the money to do something to help the planet) don't feel the same way.

[highplainsdem]

36. There are almost certainly billions of inhabitable oases circling their

own stars, spread unimaginably far and wide across the universe.

But this is our oasis, the one we and every other species we share it with evolved to belong on. Our planetary mother.

And Shatner got a very good look at how small and fragile and in need of protection this beautiful oasis is.

[GreenWave]

37. Remember the rock creatures Captain Kirk!

No kill I.

[Backseat Driver]

38. At the end of life, you can now make "space travel" fact, not a feeling:

https://www.celestis.com/experiences-pricing/

[jaxexpat]

39. William Shatner,

living every moment as if Dostoyevsky wrote his itinerary.

[calimary]

41. Just read the "Variety" article. DAYUM...

His depth of feeling and sincerity here is a revelation. Didn’t think he had it in him. Didn’t know he had it in him.

I can get a month’s worth of “Quote of the Week” nuggets out of just this one single read. Impressively eloquent.

[bigtree]

46. I read it in Shatner's stage voice

..."I wanted. Needed to get to the window as quickly as possible. To see what was out there."



A thoroughly enlightening read about a once in a lifetime experience.

[calimary]

49. LOL! I can hear you doing it!

I imagine most of us have a Shatner Bad-Acting impersonation in us!

[Pepsidog]

42. I recently read an Instagram post from a space account I follow and it said that if you are looking

Last edited Wed Oct 12, 2022, 11:55 AM - Edit history (2)

for heaven it's right here on earth. Basically, of all the trillions of stars and galaxies the chance to find earth and life as we know it is so incredibly small that it can be said that earth is heaven.

[calimary]

55. Love this quote of yours, Pepsidog!

May I use it?

[Pepsidog]

59. Sure. Wish I could find the original Instagram post as it described it much better.

[Emile]

57. Heaven on Earth is a choice

[Mysterian]

45. It makes me sad too

that my species is a stupid, violent animal destroying the only known biosphere in the universe.

[twodogsbarking]

53. Earth will survive. Inhabitants, meh.

[OldBaldy1701E]

73. Exactly! (n/t)

[c-rational]

68. Oh my dear Captain Kirk. I appreciate this and can understand your feelings. What I cannot

fathom or forgive is your need or desire or acquiescence to do Medicare Advantage ads. May the force turn you around to the good side.

[Marthe48]

71. Daughter was home for the weekend

She's 50, and we get along great. We were having a discussion about politics, environment, current events. She mentioned plans for putting a permanent base on Mars, which she thought meant long-term plans to colonize it. I said that I had thought for years that humans had screwed up Mars and moved to Earth from there. She was astonished at the thought. I know that my idea is pure speculation.

We humans need to understand it isn't all about us, and not only are we ruining our living space, but ruining the planet for most other species. We have looked to the past and see the future, yet we do nothing to change course. Some of us might someday live on another orb in space, but you know what? If we don't clean up our act, we'll do the same thing in another place. Our species act like fleas, but we could be so much more.

[wryter2000]

74. I had no idea he could be so eloquent

[Marcuse]

75. Scanning......

[LaMouffette]

76. Beautiful passage, Captain Kirk! They DID send a poet this time.

[burrowowl]

83. Loved the first Star Treks!

[Johnny999r]

84. Shatner is my new hero

I never thought William Shatner would describe his trip to space so eloquently and relevant. He was able to bridge the contrast between the vacuum of space and the small blue jewel all living things call home. Humans are solely responsible to care for our planet, but instead are killing it and there are hundreds if not thousands of examples where man has caused the extinction of both plant and animal species, as Shatner alluded to.

All of it for various selfish reasons, not caring the destructive behavior they commit in their lives affects the lives of future generations. Most humans care only for themselves, in the moment gratification, whether financial or emotional.

I have no doubt the human race will self destruct thousands of years before we will be technically capable of immigrating to an earth like planet in the cosmos. Look at what we have done to this planet in the short span of a couple hundred years. Our destructive path is accelerating just as the human populations worldwide are exploding. We will no longer be able to sustain this pace and in the meantime destroy our environment and most all living things within it. It will be painful and tragic unless mankind pivots well before we reach the tipping point of our own self destruction.

William Shatner did some real soul searching during his short duration flight to space. I wish everybody on this amazing living globe in space reads what he said and learn to be caretakers of the planet.