Watch a stunned William Shatner get excited about space travel

In the world of marketing, few things are more valuable than a truly satisfied customer, and that’s exactly what Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin seem to have in William Shatner. following the 90-year-old actor’s brief journey into space On Wednesday.

Like James T. Kirk in Star Trek, Shatner could often be contemplative and even profound at times. Of course, those lines were written by Gene Roddenberry and a host of other writers over the years. But Shatner’s own words during his few minutes of weightlessness and upon returning to Earth are among some of the most poignant delivered by a human visitor to space, which become even more wonderful when spoken in their characteristic cadence of waiting.

“Weightlessness, oh Jesus!” Shatner is heard exclaiming in the video above as the New Shepard crew capsule crosses the Karman Line, the conventional divider between Earth’s atmosphere and space.

“No description can match this, weightlessness … oh my gosh. Oh wow. Oh I’m telling you. Oh my gosh, oh wow, I can’t believe this.”

It’s not exactly poetry, but the heartfelt reaction of a man totally dumbfounded by a life-changing experience after nine decades of life is a wonderful thing to witness. As his crewmates float and circle the capsule with a kind of giddy glee, Shatner seems to spend most of the flight in awe and admiring the view.

Once back on dry land, after the champagne was sprinkled on the desert floor, Shatner was able to begin gathering his words in a conversation with Blue Origin and Amazon founder Bezos. You can watch the exchange at the 2:56 mark in the video below.

“What you’ve built, everyone should do,” Shatner tells Bezos. “Everyone in the world needs to see …”, he turns off while drowning.

“The blue cover, the sheet, this blanket, this blue quilt that we have around us, we think, oh, that’s the blue sky, and then all of a sudden, you suddenly walk through it as if you were to remove a sheet from yourself. when you’re asleep and you’re looking at the blackness … at the black ugliness. And you look down and there’s the blue down there and the black up there and it’s just … there (down) is mother Earth and consolation and there ( above, in space) is … is there death? I don’t know, is that what death is like? Whoa! And is he gone? Jesus. ”

Shatner then rubs his eyes as he cries again.

“It was very moving for me. This experience is incredible.”

You don’t get much better testimonial than that. I can’t wait to hear the song that shatner writes about your flight.