30 thoughts on “Shatner’s Experience”

  1. Space is death.
    “Bezos: The atmosphere? No, I mean, it’s maybe… depends on how you measure it… it thins out… maybe 50 miles?”

    Breathable air about 10 miles. Earth’s atmosphere, you are still in it.
    Driving in car, and being in airliner, is likewise, death.
    But I would tend to think of sudden blackness as like death, and guess the blackness would happen quite fast.
    Much faster the then your eyes could adjust and thereby see the stars.

    1. Many a word has been spilled over what the Void is.

      I imagine that people living in space who can’t return to Earth and can only visit close by will think many of the same thoughts as Shatner as they are stuck in the Void looking down on home and they can never experience it.

      Instead of contemplating the nature of the Void, they will contemplate the nature of a jewel created just for them but that sits always just out of reach and what that means for life and how to live it.

      1. You are not looking far enough ahead.

        Of course we observe the Earth’s surface and all it’s environs through our portal. We can sense not only what the biologic human can but also into infrared, radio, sound everything down to 0 and above into ultraviolet (what little there is on the surface), X-ray to gamma not so much on the surface thanks to that unnecessary but blanketing atmosphere. Even though it would yield tremendous resolution. But our relays on the Earth’s Moon and in orbit around the gas giant you call Jupiter and on Saturn’s moon Iapetus take full advantage. The bigger ones can actually transfer matter through a space-time warp. But we’ve long since cast away that inconvenience. Even so we can also ‘see’ what you see and think what you think. We can even alter brain patterns or manipulate your atomic composition to be a pure energy being if the tapestry is fine enough. Might take a few hundred thousand years or so, really nothing time-wise. See you soon. – 1:4:9

      2. “I imagine that people living in space who can’t return to Earth”

        Why can’t they return to Earth?
        I think people will be sentimental about Earth. Or Earth will be like a holy land or something. They may yearn to go to holy land but maybe don’t get around to doing it. Or they do, every years or something.
        I can’t see why can’t return- unless one happens to going at 1/2 the speed of light away from it.

        1. Someone who grows up on Mars might not have the bone density to survive on Earth; they’d be cripples.

          1. I don’t think settlements on the Moon are going to happen soon because lunar water will be quite expensive but expect over time the cost/price of lunar water will lower down to $1 per kg. Or lunar water could start at around $500 per kg and within decade or two, lower to less than $100 per kg.
            And for there to Mars settlements I think Mars water will start at $1 per kg, and over time lower in price.
            And because Mars could start with relativity lower price of water {and CO2} one could have Mars settlements.
            And currently the price of electrical power anywhere in space, and needs to also be made cheaper, in order to have Mars settlements.
            So Mars rocket fuel in the beginning will be very expensive, but over time, it will lower in price to be somewhere around the price Earth’s rocket fuel. And to leave Mars require a lot less rocket fuel than leaving Earth. And expect the cost to leave Earth become a lot cheaper if there is Mars settlements- and Mars being even cheaper to leave than Earth.
            And there could lots of cheap rocket fuel in space, and lots and cheap, one travel quickly from Mars to Earth- without even considering not using chemical rocket fuel in order to make even cheaper.
            And it seems the portion of Mars population yearly leaving Mars should much higher the percentage Earthlings yearly leaving Earth. Though possible that some Martians will go to Mars and never leave planet.
            Also, it seems suborbital travel on Mars is far easier than suborbital travel on Earth, and such suborbital travel will require 1 gee or more of acceleration. So people who don’t leave Mars, and Martians also never suborbital travel on Mars would even smaller percentage of Martians. Plus one the acceleration of “trains” on Mars- other ways of traveling. which makes smaller percentage of population.

        2. Heinlein’s “Future History” series has a cute short story about what happens when a couple from Luna City takes a sentimental vacation on Earth (“It’s Great to be Back!”). 🙂

  2. When you’re young, you see “space” as a frontier waiting to be explored. When you’re 90, you see it as death. So it appears that this was, in essence, an astronautical Rorschach test. And it gives a whole new meaning to “Take me out to the black, Tell them I ain’t comin back.”

  3. Bezos has definitely got a step up on Musk now. The most logical response is for Elon to launch Buzz Aldrin back into orbit, as Buzz is a year older than Shatner.

    1. Musk launched 4 people into orbit for 3 days. Bezos launched 5 people on a 10 minute suborbital ride. One of these things is not like the other.

      1. Hush. Just go with it. It would be awesome for Musk to not only send Aldrin, but to do so on a Dragon loop around the moon.

        1. If he sent Aldrin and Shatner together around the moon, it would probably be the most epic event ever recorded. But Elon could up it even further by adding Sigourney Weaver. Then, once everyone is pretty confident that she’ll be the only survivor, he could add Keith Richards. What better way to ensure mission success than to send four people who can’t die? Or he could follow his current practice of destroying the early vehicles and just send Sean Bean.

  4. [gets interrupted by Bezos who asks for champagne]

    Bezos made a fool of himself here. Shatner was mid sentence starting to describe his experience and Bezos just turned away and ignores him for about a minute. Strange, very unprofessional.

  5. I like Shatner, but he was bloviating a bit. He was definitely off script with all that death stuff. Better to give him a few days or weeks to digest the experience and then talk about it on a podcast.

    I also saw that tool Bezos had his side-piece prominently hogging the camera. She’s a piece of work.

    1. I like Shatner as well. I would imagine just about everyone would be babbling immediately after stepping out of the ship.

      I was moved when he said “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t wanna lose it. It’s so… it’s so much larger than me and life.”

    2. https://hotair.com/karen-townsend/2021/10/15/shatner-prince-william-has-got-the-wrong-idea-about-space-tourism-n422681

      “I would tell the prince (William), and I hope the prince gets the message, this is a baby step into the idea of getting industry up there, so that all those polluting industries, especially, for example, the industries that make electricity… off of Earth,” Shatner said.

      The actor said we have the technology to send the things to space, and we could “build a base 250, 280 miles above the Earth and send that power down here, and they catch it, and they then use it, and it’s there.”

      “All it needs is… somebody as rich as Jeff Bezos [to say], ‘Let’s go up there,’” he said, adding that Prince William is “missing the point.”

      “The point is these are the baby steps to show people [that] it’s very practical. You can send somebody like me up into space,” he said. Shatner did say, however, that he agrees with Prince William that there are issues to address on Earth, “but we can curl your hair and put lotion on your face at the same time.”

      Mr. Shatner may have some of the details wrong, but argues an important “use case” for commercial space?

      1. “Mr. Shatner may have some of the details wrong, but argues an important “use case” for commercial space?”

        Well, I put it at about 50 years after we start lunar water mining, or 50 years after there is 10,000 people living on Mars.
        We could have had it earlier but we didn’t explore the Moon.
        Of course if have power satellites for Earth surface we also power satellites of beamed power for going to places in Mars quicker, or Jupiter, quicker- and we do any interstellar stuff a lot better. And we of course will have rocket fuel available in space.
        Though having beamed power and rocket fuel at Venus orbit, would better than Earth orbit. And Venus orbit would better to bring billions of tons of water from Space, to. If going to move the dwarf planet Ceres anywhere, Venus would good place.

      2. I am never more thankful to be American than when I read something that idiot family says. The Queen seems cool enough but she did raise Charles who in turn raised the moron princes. Somehow we got infested with one of them and the little turd runs down our country and culture every chance he gets.

  6. The hype we hear from the announcer is that this was about raising awareness of the preciousness of Earth and the environment, and then Bezos discards his empty champagne bottle by tossing it on the ground, littering the environment, ostensibly to have someone else pick it up.

  7. It was interesting to hear Shatner essentially steal lines from McCoy.

    “Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence!”
    “One tiny crack in the hull and our blood boils in thirteen seconds!”

    I’m sure Nimoy would’ve been tempted to step out of the capsule and just say “Fascinating.”

    1. “It’s a hell of a way to travel. Sending a man’s flesh and bones over 300,000 ft into the air and them dropping them back on the ground with three flimsy parachutes and a big ‘boof’ at the end. I avoid it whenever I can…” – L. “Bones” McCoy M.D.

    2. “Goin’ inta Space like that Laddie?
      No maneuvering thrusters?
      No impulse power?
      No inertial dampers?
      Guidance computers using primitive electronics, not duo-tronics?
      Not even emergency anti-grav?

      Hoot’ man.
      Your either the bravest man I know or a fool.
      In either case, you survived the trip, have some Scotch….”

      – M. “Scotty” Scott

  8. I was very happy to see William Shatner make the flight and return safely. I like him. I think his example can be inspirational to a lot of people.

    If he had trouble finding the words after the flight well, that’s a good thing not a bad thing.

  9. I used to hope for a latter-day Trek episode in which the transporter twinkled and Denny Crane materialized.

    As for HRH the Prince, he’s the culmination of centuries of inbreeding among boorish boobs. When I see him, I hear his dad intoning, “Wellll, *poggies* you knehw…” to explain his hatred of cats.

    1. I was always hoping for a Star Trek themed Halloween party at Boston Legal with Denny Crane as you know who and James Spader as Mr. Spock.

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