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
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