Is that the way death is? 11-minute space odyssey overwhelms William Shatner

William Shatner said that the space flight he undertook aboard
Blue Origin’s New Shepard was the “most profound experience”. The 90-year-old
actor who played the iconic Captain Kirk in Star Trek became the oldest person
to visit space in human history. “I hope I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t
want to lose it,” Shatner told CNN upon his return.

“I am overwhelmed. I had no idea. We were talking earlier, yeah,
it’s going to be different – whatever that phrase is that you have a different
view of things, it doesn’t begin to explain, to describe, what, for me,” he
said after exiting his Blue Origin flight.

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Shatner’s flight to outer space was not without roadblocks.
There were multiple holds before lift-off and every hold made the 90-year-old
actor more and more nervous, he told Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin’s livestream of
the spaceflight.

According to Shatner, while the simulations did prepare the crew
for what was to come, they did not capture the “real experience. “Am I going to
be able to survive the G forces? Am I going to survive it? Then I think, ‘good
lord, just getting up the bloody gantry.’ Oh my God, what an experience,” CNN
reported the veteran actor as saying.

Also Read | Captain Kirk goes to space: All you need to know about William Shatner’s space trip

William Shatner further said that everybody in the world “needs
to do this” to see the “blue colour whip by you, and now you’re staring into
blackness, that’s the thing. Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise said that the
sky is a comforter of blue that we have around us.

“You look down, there’s the blue down there and the black up
there…there’s Mother Earth and comfort, and there is, is there death? I don’t
know, but is that death? Is that the way death is?… It was so moving; this
experience, it was something unbelievable,” Shatner said as the Blue Origin
crew celebrated behind him.

William Shatner went to space aboard Jeff Bezos’ New Shepard spaceflight
on Wednesday. Shatner was accompanied by Chris Boshuizen, a cofounder of a satellite
company Planet Labs, and software executive Glen de Vries, who are both paying
customers. Audrey Powers, vice president of Blue Origin’s mission and flight
operations was also part of the crew.