For William Shatner, one of the biggest feelings he felt during his trip to space last year was grief.
The 91-year-old actor, famous for playing Capt. James Kirk in Star Trek, reflected on his actual space journey in a book titled Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder, which was released on Tuesday. Once he and his other crew members made it out into space, Shatner described the view of space as a “cold, dark, black emptiness,” unlike the mystery and majestic view he was expecting to see, according to Variety.
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered,” Shatner wrote. “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.”
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Shatner wrote that he was not alone in his feelings, as other astronauts — including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, and Sally Ride — have experienced similar feelings during their trips to space. The feeling is known as the “Overview Effect,” which occurs in someone when he or she travels to space and feels “a sense of the planet’s fragility” when looking at Earth from orbit, Shatner wrote.
In June, Shatner stated that he broke into tears following his space flight when he thought about climate change. After landing back on Earth, he told Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Blue Origin, that he wished to “never recover from this.”
“It’s going to get worse!” Shatner said. “It’s like somebody owing money on a mortgage, and they don’t have the payments, and they think, ‘Oh well, let’s go to dinner and not think about it.'”
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Thursday will mark the first anniversary of Shatner’s flight, in which he became the oldest person to travel to space in a rocket at 90 years old.
The four-member crew traveling on the Blue Origin rocket included Shatner, tech mogul and entrepreneur Glen de Vries, Blue Origin Vice President Audrey Powers, and former NASA engineer Dr. Chris Boshuizen.
