William Shatner: my trip to space filled me with “overwhelming sadness”
William Shatner (Captain Kirk in Star Trek), after his trip in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021.
r/Pessimism, u/Obvious_Average3549, reporting from: https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldly-go-excerpt-1235395113/[🡕]
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I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. 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. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold… all I saw was death.
I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. […]