Sci-Fi fans have been able to witness a unique meeting of fiction and real life, with William Shatner – aka Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk – completing his first actual trip into space at age 90.
Shatner took the trip with three others aboard one of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin ships. The trip itself only took roughly 10 minutes, with the crew being blasted up to an altitude of 107km over the desert in West Texas.
Once back on solid ground, Shatner and his passengers emerged – understandably stunned and changed. For Shatner, who broke the record for the oldest person in space, was particularly overcome by the experience.
“What you have given me is the most profound experience,” Shatner said.
“I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it.”
“Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see,” he said.
“To see the blue colour whip by and now you’re staring into blackness, that’s the thing. The covering of blue, this sheath, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around, we say, ‘Oh, that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it all, and you’re looking into blackness, into black ugliness.”
Check out William Shatner speaking of his experience in space, below.
