William Shatner.Photo: Greg Doherty/Getty
William Shatner’s trip to outer space left him with mixed emotions.
Back in October 2021, theStar Trekactor, 91, traveled onJeff Bezos' Blue Originspace shuttle, becoming theoldest living person to go into space.
“You can only prepare so much for a trip out of Earth’s atmosphere!” Shatner said, perVariety.
“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,” he wrote.
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All of that became secondary when he gazed out into space. “There was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold… all I saw was death,” said Shatner.
When his attention returned to Earth, he recognized all that he was leaving behind — and how important it was to him.
“It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her,” Shatner continued.
“Everything I had thought was wrong,” Shatner then detailed. “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.”
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Comparing his experience toJodie Foster’s character in the movieContact, Shatner added, “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.”
In the excerpt, Shatner wrote that he later learned he “was not alone in this feeling,” which iscalled the “Overview Effect"and is “not uncommon among astronauts.”
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In October 2021, the Emmy Award-winning actor also told Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos about his experiences high above the blue planet.
“In a way, it’s indescribable,” Shatner told Bezos, 58, who made his owntrip to spacein July 2021.
“Not only is it different from what you thought, it happens so quickly,” he added during aBlue Originlive stream.
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source: people.com
