Say what you want about the billionaire space race, but it seems to have had a profound impact on none other than Captain Kirk himself. It may have been a comparatively comfortable ride on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space tourism vehicle rather than heading to the final frontier on the Enterprise and dealing with any number of alien mischief. Nonetheless, it caused now 90-year-old iconic Star Trek actor William Shatner to burst into tears.Speaking to CNN Business in an interview earlier this week, Shatner said that when he returned to earth following his sub-orbital excursion on the second ever crewed flight by the New Shepard last fall, he could not stop crying. The reason? He was experiencing deep grief for the planet. Shatner stated,
"It took me hours to understand what it was, why I was weeping. I realized I was in grief. I was grieving for the destruction of the Earth."
He went on to say that he had the profound realization that,
"It's gonna get worse! It's like somebody owing money on a mortgage, and they don't have the payments, and they think, 'Oh well, let's go to dinner and not think about it.'"
The overview effect
Mr Shatner, famous for portraying one of the first truly iconic sci-fi characters on television in the original Star Trek series, may have experienced what is often referred to as the 'overview effect'. This is a distinct sense of interconnectedness and planetary awareness that can occur when astronauts first see the earth from space.
Shatner intends to publish a book this fall which is to be titled 'Boldly Go'. It is intended as part biography with reflections on his life and career, but also the "interconnectivity of all things," inspired by String theory.
Boldly go in... a giant balloon?
Furthermore, he is the face of a coding competition called 'Hack the Galaxy' that will offer either a $130,000 cash prize or the chance to join a 2026 flight planned by startup Space Perspective. The company claims that it will offer the first carbon-neutral way to space - in a capsule attached to its SpaceBalloon™.
Bezos' space toy
The New Shepard is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing, crew-rated suborbital launch vehicle. Billionaire's phallically shaped mid-life space toy or not, it is an engineering marvel nonetheless. It is manufactured by Blue Origin, the aerospace company started by Amazon founder and richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos.
New Shepard embarked on its first crewed flight in July 2021 with four people on board, including Bezos. The second, on which Shatner came along for the ride, took place in October last year. Since then, the spacecraft has completed three more crewed flights, the last one at the beginning of this month. Whether this is the first step to launch into the final frontier, or potentially moving polluting industries into space as Bezos suggests, only time will tell.
Do you believe we will send humans outside the solar system one day? Would resources be better allocated towards solving problems on earth rather than racing to Mars? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.
Source: CNN Business