William Shatner Speech After Blue Origin Space Flight Transcript

William Shatner: (00:00)
Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable. I mean, the little things, the weightlessness. But to see the blue color go whip by, and now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. The covering of blue is this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around. We think, “Oh, that’s blue sky.” And there’s something you shoot through, and all of a sudden, as though 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 and Earth and comfort. And there… Is there death? I don’t know. Was that death? Is that the way death is? Whoop and it’s gone. Jesus.

William Shatner: (01:10)
It was so moving to me. This experience been something unbelievable. You see, yeah, you know, weightless. My stomach went up. I’m like, “God, this is so weird.” But not as weird as the covering of blue. This is what I’ve never expected. Oh, it’s one thing to say, “Oh, the sky and the thing and the fragile… ” But it’s all true. But what isn’t true, what is unknown, until you do it, 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. It’s what… How thick is it? Do we know?

Jeff Bezos: (01:56)
The atmosphere?

William Shatner: (01:57)
Is it a mile? Two miles?

Jeff Bezos: (01:58)
No. It depends on how you measure it, because it thins out, but maybe 50 miles.

William Shatner: (02:02)
But you’re going 2,000 miles an hour. So you’re through 50 miles at whatever the mathematics says.

Jeff Bezos: (02:08)
Fast. Yeah. Really fast.

William Shatner: (02:10)
It’s like a beat and a beat, and suddenly you’re through the blue.

Jeff Bezos: (02:12)
And then it’s black.

William Shatner: (02:13)
And you’re into black. And you’re into… Ah, it’s mysterious and galaxies and things. But what you see is black. And what you see down there is light, and that’s the difference. And not to have this? You have done something. I mean, whatever those other guys are doing, what isn’t… I don’t know about that. What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened. It’s extraordinary. Extraordinary.

William Shatner: (02:55)
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. And it hasn’t got anything to do with the little green man [inaudible 00:03:16] of the blue or… It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the enormity and the quickness and the suddenness of life and death and the… Oh, my God. [inaudible 00:03:29].

Jeff Bezos: (03:25)
It’s so beautiful.

William Shatner: (03:31)
Beautiful. Yes. Beautiful in its way. But-

Jeff Bezos: (03:33)
No, I mean your words.

William Shatner: (03:34)
Oh, my words.

Jeff Bezos: (03:36)
That’s just amazing.

William Shatner: (03:38)
I don’t know. I can’t even begin to express what… What I would love to do is to communicate, as much as possible, 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.

Speaker 3: (04:22)
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