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Much of his 45-minute speech included discussions about the 90-year-old actor’s other plans, including his album, but towards the end he explained how he got interested in taking off.
Jason Ehrlich, a friend and producer of Shatner’s “Better Late Than Never” show, came to see him about a year and a half ago and encouraged him to consider going to space.
“’You know, they’re starting to send these rockets with people into space. Wouldn’t it be something if Captain Kirk got up there,” Ehrlich told Shatner.
“Jason, for god’s sake nobody cares about – uh getting in – that was 55 years ago – my god man – uh, um, uh – well, maybe I should go in there ‘space,’ Shatner recalled, detailing how he came to want to go there.
Shatner was hoping he would be on the first Blue Origin flight, but “suddenly” Jeff Bezos and his brother were announced for the trip. “Then there was an old lady … and then there was a young woman,” he told a laughing audience.
“So finally they came to me at the second thing. They said ‘okay, how would you like to get on. You’ll be the oldest guy in space, ”Shatner said. “I don’t want to be known as the oldest guy. I’m the fucking Captain Kirk!
Last week, he visited the Blue Origin launch site in Texas for two days to prepare for the flight.
“It’s the endless spirit,” he said of the scenery. “You drive 100 miles and you come to a little town called Van Horn, then you turn left. And you drive another 50 miles.”
He described the assurances given to him by Blue Origin staff as not entirely reassuring.
“The phrase they use a lot was ‘this is our best guess than …’ your best guess?” he said to the incredulous crowd.
He then recounted the initial problems with the Hubble Space Telescope and the events leading up to the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.
Shatner said past space travel disasters sometimes gave him pause.
“We are human beings, we make mistakes,” he said. “I think, I’m getting on a rocket and our best guess is that I should be fine. So there’s an insignificant little fire of terror. I’m terrified. I’m Captain Kirk and I’m terrified!”
At the laughter of the crowd, he said the feeling is not constant.
“You know, I’m not really terrified. Yes, I am. It comes and goes like a summer cold,” he told the audience with a laugh.
He also spoke about what he can’t wait to see in space.
“Three minutes in the weightlessness of space, and the beauty of this oasis on Earth, and – I intended to press my nose against the window, you know, and my only hope was not to seeing someone else looking back. ”Shatner said, referring to the classic 1963 episode Twilight Zone where he played a man who saw a creature on the wing of an airplane at 20,000 feet .
He added that when his daughters got older they would have him recreate the scene every time they were on the plane.
Shatner hasn’t yet figured out what words he’ll say when he reaches space, he said, but he’s reviewed the words other people have used.
“What can I say that is different,” he asked rhetorically. “I’ll try to think of something to suggest how deeply I feel the experience of looking into the limitless distance.”
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