Blue Origin postponed William Shatner’s flight by a day because of high winds. But on Wednesday morning, William Shatner and three other soon-to-be astronauts rocketed into space, just above the Karman line, the internationally-recognized boundary of our atmosphere. When his capsule landed, ninety-year-old Shatner walked out and spoke with Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin. I’ve done my best to transcribe what he said, despite the wind and poor audio making some of it inaudible. Hopefully someone skilled with audio will clean it up. The ellipses (…) do not represent anything omitted from his speech, they represent his (famous) pauses. And where it’s capitalized, that was to capture his emphasis. Here’s my transcript:
WILLIAM SHATNER:
In a way it’s indescribable. (inaudible) Not only is it different from what you thought — it happened so quickly.
…The impression I have, that I never expected to have, is the shooting up through this blue sky
(at which point Bezos asks for a champagne bottle, sprays it all over people, and then turns back to Shatner hoping Shatner will continue talking)
What you have done… everybody in the world needs to view… this. Everybody in the world… needs to SEE… (inaudible)… It was unbelievable. UNBELIEVABLE. I mean, the little things: the weightlessness… but to SEE the blue color go WHIP BY you… and now you’re staring at blackness… THAT’S the thing… the coloring of blue. The sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us. We say “oh, that’s a blue sky.” And then suddenly you SHOOT through it all (inaudible) whip off the 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 it’s just… it’s just (pointing down with both hands) THERE is MOTHER of… Earth… Comfort… (pointing up) and THERE is… is there DEATH? I don’t know, is that Death? Is that the way death is? WHIP and it’s GONE.
JEsus.
(tears) It was SO moving to me. This experience is something unbelievable. You see… yeah, you know, you (inaudible) Weightlessness in my stomach, and I’m like (gasp) this is so weird. But not as weird as the covering of BLUE. This is what I NEVER expected. Oh it’s one thing to say ‘Oh the sky and the thing and the fragile but… (inaudible) true, but what ISN’T true, what – what is UNKOWN, until you do [fly into space], is… 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 one of (inaudible)
Is it less than a mile? Two miles? (crosstalk with Bezos who says “the atmosphere? You know it’s maybe… it depends on how you measure, to the top of it, maybe fifty miles”)
But you’re going… 2000 miles an hour, so you’re through fifty miles at whatever the mathematics was… you know like a beat and a beat and suddenly you’re through the blue. And you’re into black. And you’re into… you know, it’s (inaudible), 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, (putting hands on Bezos’s shoulders) …I mean whatever those other guys are doing (possible reference to Space-X), it… what isn’t… they don’t… I don’t know about them. What YOU have given ME is the most profound experience (chuckling, choking back tears) I could imagine. It’s a… I’m so… filled with emotion of what just happened, I… I, I just… (Bezos puts his hand on Shatner’s arm) …it was extraordinary. Extraordinary.
(He and Bezos hug)
I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can… maintain what I feel now, I … I don’t want to lose it. It’s so…………. so much larger than me and life. It hasn’t got anything to do with the little green men, with the blue orb, it… it has to do with the ENORMITY… and the quickness, and the suddenness of life and death, of the (wiping eyes) OH my God… (inaudible)…
(crosstalk with Bezos who tells him his words are beautiful)
I can’t begin to express … what I would love to do is to communicate as much as possible, the… JEOPARDY, the… the, the …moment you SEE how …vul… the vulnerability… of everything, it’s SO SMALL. This AIR which is keeping us alive, is… is thinner than your SKIN. It’s… it’s a, it’s a, it’s a SLIVER, it’s… it’s IMMEASURABLY SMALL, when you think in terms of the, of the universe. It’s a… it’s not, it’s… NEGLIGIBLE, this air. Mar’s doesn’t have it. Nothing, I mean this… and when you think of the (inaudible, about mixture of oxygen in our atmosphere) about 20% or so, and that level it sustains our life… it’s so THIN. To, to… to DIRTY it! (crosstalk with Bezos, about how quick and sudden the change is from blue to black, from life to death)This is life, and that’s death. And it’s, it’s… in an instant, you go ‘WHOAH! That’s death!’ THAT’S what I saw. I am overwhelmed. I had no idea.