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'The most profound experience'

-- William Shatner

• https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/13/william-shatner-speech-to-jeff-bezos-after-blue-origin-launch.html

Shatner: “Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see ... it was unbelievable.”

Shatner: “I mean, the little things, the weightlessness, and to see the blue color whip by and now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. This covering of blue is this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue around that we have around us. We think ‘oh, that’s blue sky’ and suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, like you whip a sheet off you when you’re asleep, and you’re looking into blackness – into black ugliness. And you look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there, and there is Mother Earth and comfort and – is there death? Is that the way death is?”

Shatner: “It was so moving to me. This experience; it was something unbelievable. Yeah, weightlessness, my stomach went out, this was so weird, but not as weird as the covering of blue – this is what I never expected. It’s one thing to say “oh the sky ... and it’s fragile,” it’s all true. But what isn’t true, what is unknown, until you do [go to space] is this pillow, there’s this soft blue. Look at the beauty of that color. And it’s so thin and you’re through it in an instant. How thick is it? Is it a mile?”

... What you’ve given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I am so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary. I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now, I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than me and life; it hasn’t got anything to do with the little green and blue orb. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death. Oh my god, it’s unbelievable.”

Bezos: “It’s so beautiful.”

Shatner: “Beautiful, yes, beautiful in it’s way but.”

Bezos: “No, I mean your words. It’s just amazing.”

Shatner: “I can’t even begin to express ... what I would love to do is to communicate as much as possible is the jeopardy. The moment you see the vulnerability of everything; it’s so small. This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver; it’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have any, nothing. I mean, when you think of when carbon dioxide changes to oxygen and what is 20% that sustains our life? It’s so thin.”

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