William Shatner: My Trip to Space Filled Me With Sadness - Variety
In this exclusive excerpt from William Shatner’s new book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” the “Star Trek” actor reflects on his voyage into space on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Then 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to travel into space, but as the actor and author details below, he was surprised by his own reaction to the experience.
no wonder bezos quickly shut him up and popped a bottle of champagne
People don't understand, space is cold and dangerous. Life can't live on Mars. We have a beautiful planet here with plenty of room for everyone and yet capitalists are destroying it. Shatner gets it.
The real sign that these space capitalists don't actually care or have any true ambitions about space is their complete disinterest in orbital habitats, even as a grift if living in space was really something that wanted they would at least be bloviating about building O'Neil cylinders and shit, instead they wax poetic about livin on a dead rock with a third of earth gravity, they might as well be talking about building ancapstan on the bottom of the ocean considering how much seriousness they give the subject
Also I think the left should steal the idea of orbitals from them before their marketing advisors clock into it, having a vision of the future even if it's unattainable is a powerful tool of agitation
I mean unless you're a primitivist industrialzing space is a good idea in abstract
But Bezos is neoliberal capitalist, so god knows what his nonsensical definition of industrialized earth orbit is, probably mass surveillance and tourism
First private space station will be an ore processing facility with slave labor, just like Terok Nor.
The real sign that these space capitalists don’t actually care or have any true ambitions about space is their complete disinterest in orbital habitats, even as a grift if living in space was really something that wanted they would at least be bloviating about building O’Neil cylinders and shit, instead they wax poetic about livin on a dead rock with a third of earth gravity
It's 100% about imagining removing themselves from any semblance of accountability or vulnerability to the rest of humanity. Before anti-satellite missiles were a thing the same brainworms were imagining orbitals being their escape, but now they have to imagine setting up hardened bunkers on another planet entirely. You can look to what they're doing on Earth already: setting up personal bunkers in places they imagine they could set themselves up as post-apocalyptic warlords if their space-escape plans fall through. They literally believe that they'll have a better chance of survival as a feudal warlord ruling over a mars bunker than they will on Earth where seeing consequences for their actions is at least hypothetically possible.
Also I think the left should steal the idea of orbitals from them before their marketing advisors clock into it, having a vision of the future even if it’s unattainable is a powerful tool of agitation
Paging the late Iain M. Banks...
Even dangerous gives it too much of a personality. Its empty. Nothing. On a cosmic scale, even if we devoted everything we know towards colonizing other planets/celestial bodies, the chance that we breach our own solar system with human life is infinitesimally small before our sun goes supernova. even besides that, the chance we successfully colonize a single body in our own solar system is pretty slim.
The void is so empty we can see forever in every direction with a powerful enough telescope. We've been fascinated with doing so as long as we've had recorded history. The only thing we've found is worse than any old gods or advanced race or dangers beyond our comprehension; its that we're anomalous and alone. The only meaning is what we make here on Earth.
We didn't have evidence of extrasolar planets until 1992. Webb is basically the first telescope that can even see Earthlike planet atmospheres to look for oxygen or other biosignatures and it's not even built for that, so it won't be very good at it. Yeah, the place is hella empty, and we're probably separated by time as well as space from anyone else, but we have no evidence one way or the other of inhabited planets because we can't see them yet.
As far as I'm concerned, belief in alien life is similar to belief in ghosts. I'm not gonna yuck anyone's yum, but it is based entirely on Faith at this point. We may be able to rationalize why believing in aliens is More Rational, but at the end of the day there's literal 0 evidence of Any Life or Civilization Existing or Extinct. A lack (rather, complete void, fittingly enough) of evidence one way is evidence towards the antithesis. Or at the very least burden of proof is certainly on Alien Race Enjoyers right now
The void is so empty we can see forever in every direction with a powerful enough telescope.
This is why I think humanity will first see an alien civilization long before we will ever be able to meet them or even communicate with them.
I think we have a shot at traveling beyond the solar system with robots
50+ years to get a probe out there and then centuries before it gets to any "something" in deep space.
that's not really a human lifetime-scale endeavor
Absolutely. It's something that would be created by one generation and any success might be observed entire civilizations later.
He apparently legit spent the whole time thinking about how he could build a space station fulfillment centre :porky-happy:
I can't help but see people like Bezos as less human than myself, based on freakish shit like that.
Yeah, being a billionnaire really does seem to rot your soul, it's disturbing.
You don't have a soul. You are removed from all interactions that nuture a soul.
I've been told that the evidence is more than strong enough to consider the ultra-rich boug fucks a different species entirely based on material, anthropological, and sociological standards. And we don't even need that academic validation to come to that conclusion :agony-shivering:
biological speciation is when any individual from a population cannot reproduce fertile, viable offspring with an individual from another population. For example, a horse and a donkey can breed a mule but they are always sterile. Dogs are all the same species because they are all interbreedable.
Rich humans can obviously reproduce viable kids with proles, so biological speciation has not yet occurred. If they begin extensive gene modifications on themselves that is cost prohibitive, they may who knows.
possible Disco Elysium spoiler
Did you meet the guy in the shipping container in DE?
They're humans possessed by the Real God, capital
https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/2020/09/03/marx-on-capital-as-a-real-god-2/
The inhuman drive to capital accumulation has stripped their humanity away
you're welcome. blew my mind when I first read it it recently.
They are homosapiens for sure. But people that rich lack any kind of humanity. They live in a different plane of existence. They literally take planes everywhere. They don't interact with any one that isn't their handler, on the same level as them.
They are devoid of what creates humanity. They are souless succubus draining the world of it's vitality so they can have a large number above their picture.
When the day finally arrived, I couldn’t get the Hindenburg out of my head. Not enough to cancel, of course—I hold myself to be a professional, and I was booked. The show had to go on.
I can hear him saying this.
As we ascended, I was at once aware of pressure. Gravitational forces pulling at me. The g’s. There was an instrument that told us how many g’s we were experiencing. At two g’s, I tried to raise my arm, and could barely do so. At three g’s, I felt my face being pushed down into my seat. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I thought. Will I pass out? Will my face melt into a pile of mush? How many g’s can my ninety-year-old body handle?
Fuck. I mean, there's worse ways to go I guess. If you're already that old, why say no? I'm just surprised they let him.
Yeah, it was a small shock reading that. Some 70 year olds look like they're 90, some 90 year olds look like they're 60. Guess he's just the lucky latter.
I'm just surprised they let him.
I'm assume Bezos thought: "Captain Kirk's gonna ride on my rocket," and he was so enthused by the marketing he didn't care about the danger. He must have ignored any minions who told him it's not the greatest idea in the world to take a 90 year old up into space in your rocket.
The whole complaining about woke Star Trek has been since then though, right?
I don't think he was approaching it from the chud perspective though. NuTrek is objectively bad on all aspects. STD had an fucking Musk reference as one of humanity's greatest "inventors". Michael Burnham was a shit character because the show made her basicaly Jesus, it destroyed the episodic format with an ensemble cast and gave us the piece of shit mistery box JJ with 2 seasons of canon breaking nonsense(did you know the federation is actualy run by a fucking super AI? Yeah me too!) while giving us characters that can be described by a single sentence, the POC Jesus, the Traitor, the eViLLLL dIcTaTOr etc...
And then of course the entire production team still acts like they are moraly superior and dismissed all criticism by claiming it was just chud trolls. This went on beyond STD too, we saw it on Picard S1 which is even worse. At least STD had a couple of interesting moments. Picard is just trash.
To be clear there was some of that chud hate too, but NuTrek is hated by both a portion of the left and all of the right so if you are not careful you will inevitably end up being guilty by association, and Hollywood deserves all the pain the get for being insuffurable libs with a superiority complex while in reality they all have a baby brain understanding of everything.
Anyway so with all that said when we go back to Shatner I think despite him being way too senile already I think he at least understands nuTrek is probably the furthest thing away from Gene's vision, and that is considering some of the shitty TNG movies, some terrible Enterprise and Voyager episodes, and even all the DS9 controversy.
When Trek did "woke" stuff in the 60s it was genuine, they were making history with POC main characters for example.
Nowadays these scumbags think they are making history and being so brave by giving us POWERFUL POC WOMAN MC which is literal caricature of everything Trek stands for.
Once capitalism and intellectual property rights have been vanquished, we shall go back and edit the Orville to be what it was always supposed to be: TNG seasons 8+
Me too. I feel like when people say "NuTrek bad" they almost always have only ever seen Discovery and Picard.
what kind of stockholm syndrome do you have to have to see disco and picard and give them another chance?
some people like lower decks but i watched the first episode and it was ten times as hyper as the least comprehensible rick and morty episode, completely unwatchable pacing.
AlexaHexbear, please play Pale Blue Dot, by Carl Sagan.Recovered alcoholic who also lost his wife to alcoholism... Sprays champagne all over him. Shatner is visible uncomfortable with touching the alcohol.
