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William Shatner describes the profound grief he felt when he finally went to space for real

The OG Captain Kirk's real-life space experience holds important lessons for us all.

"William Shatner" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

William Shatner's trip to space wasn't what he expected.

Statistically speaking, the number of humans who have traveled into space is insignificant. But the experience of leaving our home planet and venturing into the great beyond is incredibly significant for the individuals who have actually done it.

One of those fortunate humans is actor William Shatner, who spent three years pretending to hurtle through space in his iconic role as Captain James T. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" series. As captain of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk was dedicated to exploring "strange new worlds," seeking out "new life and new civilizations" and boldly going "where no man has gone before."

Naturally, Shatner has spent a lot of time pondering what it would be like to actually experience leaving Earth, and when he took the opportunity to join Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin trip to space in October 2021 at age 90, he was able to compare how his expectations met up with reality.

Shatner shared an excerpt from his new book with Variety, and it reveals that his initial reaction to being in space was surprisingly dark.

"I love the mystery of the universe," Shatner wrote. "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…"

However, as he looked out the window of the spacecraft—a real one, not a screen on a film set—and looked in the direction opposite Earth, "there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold," he wrote. "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."

As he turned back toward "the light of home," he saw the opposite. "I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her."

Then he had a stunning revelation: "Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong."

Again, this is a man who has spent much of his life thinking about space—not as an astronaut or astronomer or astrophysicist, but as a human being stuck on the Earth's surface, struck with wonder about what's out there. He explained what he had been wrong about:

"I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film 'Contact,' when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, 'They should’ve sent a poet.' I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

"It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral."

Shatner explained how this "sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner" for many astronauts when they view Earth from orbit. It's part of the "overview effect"—the profound shift in perspective that comes with seeing our collective home from a distance. With no visible borders between nations or peoples, it becomes clear that our divisions are all manmade, which can change the way we view humanity as a whole.

The experience left Shatner with renewed conviction to focus on what we share in common.

"It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement," he wrote, "and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance."

Just beautiful. Since most of us will never leave Earth, we can take inspiration from those who have, acknowledge our essential oneness and do everything in our power to protect our beautiful, life-giving home.

Shatner shares more of his reflections on life on this planet and beyond in his new book, "Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder."

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Heroes

Why NASA is celebrating this photo of a seemingly ordinary zinnia.

Astronauts Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren accomplished something that had never been done before in 55 years of space travel.

The vacuum of space.

Photo by ogunhe/Deviant Art.

A cold, forbidding place where nothing grows.

Photo by Lunar and Planetary Institute/Flickr.

Too many of our best fictional characters have died there.

GIF from "Gravity"/Warner Bros.

GIF from "Star Wars"/20th Century Fox.

GIF from "Armageddon"/Buena Vista Pictures.

But space may have just taken an important first step to rehabilitate its reputation as a stone-cold extinguisher of being.

In a long-overdue public relations move, the infinite void decided to take a break from asphyxiating George Clooney to not only just create, but straight-up foster some life for once.

Specifically, this really awesome-looking zinnia, a type of sunflower.

Photo by Scott Kelly/NASA.

The zinnia was grown by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It is the first flower ever successfully grown in 55 years of manned space travel.

According to a NASA press release, astronaut Kjell Lindgren initiated the zinnia-growing project back in November.

The crew of the International Space Station has been stepping up its botany game since May of 2014 when the Veggie plant growth facility was installed. The largely automated setup includes clay pods to anchor the plants and facilitate water distribution in the limited gravity environment and artificial light to simulate conditions on Earth. The team started and were eventually successful growing lettuce before turning their attention to the more difficult zinnias.

When Kelly noticed a month into the project that the flowers, "weren't looking too good," he radioed ground control for help.

Together, they decided that, rather than depend on the automated system, Kelly would simply take care of the flowers himself, as if he were gardening in his backyard. A team of veggie specialists (NASA, apparently, has a team of veggie specialists) sent Kelly a one-page guide to tell him what problems to look for and how to adjust his watering schedule to correct them, which he used to nurse the plants back to health.

Scott Kelly, artist's rendering. GIF from "The Martian"/20th Century Fox.

It may seem like a small thing, but successfully growing a flower in space actually helps pave the way for bigger, better space travel in the future.

"The challenging process of growing the zinnias provided an exceptional opportunity for scientists back on Earth to better understand how plants grow in microgravity, and for astronauts to practice doing what they’ll be tasked with on a deep space mission: autonomous gardening," NASA wrote in a blog post about Kelly and Lindgren's botanical breakthrough.

In other words, thanks to the tireless efforts of our astronauts, we are one step closer to the ultimate goal of any forward-looking, post-industrial society: landing Matt Damon on Mars.

GIF from "The Martian"/20th Century Fox.

Let's go for it, world.

Heroes

4 women at NASA are currently training to become the first to walk on Mars.

NASA's class of 2013 might just have what it takes to visit the red planet and make history.

Astronauts are dreamers.

Astronauts look up to the stars and say, "I want to go there." Not metaphorically either, like a grandparent or graduation speaker might imply. They literally want to go up there and look around. Luckily for those dreamers, if they work hard enough they actually can do it.

But let's be clear. It's hard to be an astronaut. Really hard.

You think just anyone gets to carry around that lunchbox? Think again. Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/AFP/Getty Images.

A particular combination of skill, education, experience, and "The Right Stuff" is what's necessary to go to space.

In 2013, eight people became NASA's newest class of astronauts. For the first time, half of them are women.

Nicknamed "the Eight Balls" (let's not think too much about how a team with four men and four women came up with that name), the 2013 class represents the future of NASA and space travel for more than one reason.

NASA's Class of 2013. Top from left: Jessica Meir, Josh Cassada, Victor Glover, Andrew Morgan, and Christina Hammock. Bottom from left: Anne McClain, Tyler Hague, and Nicole Aunapu Mann. Photo from NASA/Wikimedia Commons

First, the class represents what you might call a "giant leap" for women in space.

Although women have been going to space since 1963, there has never been a class of NASA astronauts with a 1:1 male-to-female ratio. It's indicative not only of an evolving administration that seeks to find more gender diversity each year, but also the rising number of women in science, a field that is still largely male-dominated.

Second, members of the Eight Balls might be among those selected to go to Mars.

That's right. We're going to Mars! Eventually. It'll take at least 15 years before NASA is even ready to hit the big red launch button (they do have a big red launch button, right?), but when the class of 2013 was selected, NASA announced that they'd be among those in the running for the inaugural trip to the red planet.

Understandably, the Eight Balls are pretty excited.

"I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and I can't recall ever not wanting to be an astronaut," astronaut Anne McClain told Glamour Magazine.

McClain, like her colleagues, was chosen from 6,100 other qualified applicants. She's flown attack helicopters on the front lines of Iraq and has master's degrees in both international security and aerospace engineering (just in case you were wondering what the competition is like).

Astronaut Anne McClain in front of her attack helicopter. I don't know which is more badass. Photo via NASA/Youtube.

Rounding out the other women in the class are Nicole Aunapu Mann, who served multiple tours in Iraq flying fighter jets with the Marine Corps; Christina Hammock Koch, who spent a year in the south pole supercooling telescopes with 10,000 gallons of liquid helium; and Jessica Meir, who has a Ph.D. in marine biology and experience diving under several feet of ice in Antarctica.

15 or so years from now, these women could be among the first human beings to set foot on Mars.

Despite the fact that women have been going to space for over 50 years, there are still people who question the skills and abilities of women who dream of going to space. It wasn't that long ago that Russia's female astronauts were questioned about their makeup before an eight-day stay in a mock spacecraft to prepare for a moon mission.

Make no mistake, these women aren't any less skilled or prepared than their male counterparts just because they're women. These women are highly trained. They've got The Stuff. They've got What It Takes.

"If we go to Mars, we'll be representing our entire species in a place we've never been before," McClain says, "To me it's the highest thing a human being can achieve."

Indeed, a successful trip to Mars would probably afford human beings the most bragging rights we've had since we came down from trees, stood up on our hind legs, and invented the slap-chop.

Besides, as McClain points out, when it comes to venturing into the great reaches of outer space, "We're all just part of team human."

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Heroes

See the historic launch and landing of the first rocket to return from orbit in 1 piece.

Rocket science is alive and as awesome as ever.

If you've been dying for some rad space news since NASA completed its last space shuttle mission in 2011, it's finally here.

Photo by SpaceX/Flickr.

SpaceX made history on Dec. 21, launching the first rocket to reach orbit and touch back down on Earth in one piece.

Photo by SpaceX/Flickr.

Once in orbit, the SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered a payload of 11 satellites for communications firm Orbcomm.

GIF from SpaceX via ShantiUniverse/YouTube.

Reaching orbit and dropping off the luggage was the easy part. The landing is what scientists were most worried about.

SpaceX needed a pick-me-up this year after two failed attempts to land Falcon 9 rockets after making their orbital deliveries.

The first one exploded on impact at the platform.

The second one was little clumsy on the landing and tipped over into the ocean before also exploding into a scatter of pricey debris.

But the third time was the charm. The mission was flawless from start to finish.

Onlookers were ecstatic as the flares dimmed and smoke cleared to reveal the standing rocket, especially at mission control.

GIF from SpaceX via ShantiUniverse/YouTube.

And SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was obviously in a great mood.

The success of this mission has huge implications for the future of space exploration.

Launching rockets hasn't exactly been the most efficient endeavor. Right now, most rockets are one and done.

They use expendable launch systems — boosters break away from the rocket to lighten its load once their propulsion stages are complete, "falling back to Earth as expensive junk," wrote The New York Times.

Explosion at launch? Better luck next time. Successful launch? Great! But you're still going to have a build a new rocket because that one is hereby a museum piece.

Reusable rocket boosters can significantly reduce the costs of future space exploration missions.

Not only would they make it cheaper to send satellites into orbit, cargo shipments to the International Space Station, or rovers to other planetary bodies, but they can also open a whole new market for commercial space travel.

Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.

According to Musk:

"If one can figure out how to effectively reuse rockets just like airplanes, the cost of access to space will be reduced by as much as a factor of a hundred. A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before. That really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to revolutionize access to space."

"A fully reusable vehicle has never been done before" — until now, that is. And Musk has an ambitious vision for how this victory of rocket science can one day serve humanity.

Eventually, he hopes it can create opportunities for human settlements on Mars.

Like the debut of single-celled organisms, the emergence of multi-celled plants and animals, and the development of human consciousness, Musk sees the prospect of multi-planetary life as an important evolutionary milestone.

If (or when) that day comes, let's just hope humans have evolved to better appreciate how precious the worlds we inhabit really are.

Watch the historic Dec. 21, 2015, launch and landing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket booster:

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