Shatner calls Blue Origin spaceflight ‘so moving to me’

Moments after William Shatner returned to Earth after traveling into space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard 4 spacecraft, he spoke to the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, and said the flight was “so moving to me.” Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in the "Star Trek" television series and movies, also told Bezos, “I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened.”

Video Transcript

WILLIAM SHATNER: What you have--

- Hey, Bill.

WILLIAM SHATNER: Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see [INAUDIBLE].

- Oh, my god.

WILLIAM SHATNER: It was unbelievable, unbelievable. I mean, you know, the-- 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 the sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around. We think, oh, that's blue sky.

And then suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, like when you whip off a sheet off of you when you're asleep. And you're looking into blackness, into black ugliness. And you look down. And there's the blue down there. And the black up there. And it's-- it's just-- there is Mother Earth and comfort. And there is-- is there death? I don't know. Was that death? Is that the way death is? Whoop, and it's gone. Jesus.

It was so moving to me. This experience is something unbelievable. You say, yeah, you know, weightless, my stomach went up. This is so weird but not as weird as the covering of blue. This is what I've never experienced. Oh, it's one thing to say, oh, the sky, and the thing, and the fragile. It's all true. But what isn't true, what-- what is unknown until you do it is--

- Yeah!

WILLIAM SHATNER: There's this pure. 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: I mean, the atmosphere--

WILLIAM SHATNER: Is it a mile, 2 miles?

JEFF BEZOS: No, it's-- it depends on how you measure. Because it thins out. But maybe 50 miles, not even.

WILLIAM SHATNER: But you're going--

JEFF BEZOS: Yeah.

WILLIAM SHATNER: --2,000 miles an hour. So you're through 50 miles at whatever the mathematics [INAUDIBLE]--

JEFF BEZOS: Fast, yeah, really fast.

WILLIAM SHATNER: You know, it's like a beat and a beat. And suddenly, you're through the blue.

JEFF BEZOS: And then it's black.

WILLIAM SHATNER: And you're into black. And you're into-- you know, it's [INAUDIBLE]. It's mysterious, and galaxies, and [INAUDIBLE]. 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-- they don'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. I just-- it's extraordinary, 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-- [SIGHS] so much larger than-- than me and life. And it hasn't got anything to do with the little green [INAUDIBLE] and the blue orb. It has nothing to do that. It has to do with the enormity, and the quickness, and the suddenness of life and death, and the-- oh, my god. [INAUDIBLE]