Consider This from NPR - For William Shatner, seeing Earth from space was moving and heartbreaking

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

A year ago, William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, boarded a Blue Origin rocket ship. At the age of 90, he became the oldest person to fly into space. We hear from Shatner about "Boldly Go," the book he has since written about how that experience changed his outlook. And we also hear from Frank White, the author and philosopher who coined the term "Overview Effect" to describe experiences like Shatner's.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. Almost exactly a year ago, William Shatner, the actor who played Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek series, became a space traveler in real life. And at 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest person to ever fly into space. Minus 10. Nine. On the morning of their launch, he and three other passengers boarded Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket ship in Van Horn, Texas.

One. They took off at 9.50 a.m., reaching an altitude of 351,000 feet. It was a quick trip. They touched down under a canopy of parachutes about 10 minutes later. Captain Kirk himself, the great William Shatner. In this CNN video, journalists and onlookers greeted Shatner and the other passengers stepping out of the capsule. Blue Origin founder and billionaire Jeff passengers stepping out of the capsule. Blue Origin founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos was there too. Shatner turned to Bezos to tell him how he felt changed by his flight into space. Not only is it different than what you thought, it happened so quickly.

It happened so quickly, he said. But then Bezos cut Shatner off. The billionaire reached for a fizzy bottle of champagne and then sprayed nearly everyone there. Shatner didn't seem to mind. When Bezos finally turned back to him, Shatner was emotional. I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. Shatner described how startling it was to see Earth's blue sky peel away, replaced by the darkness, the lifelessness of space. But what you see is black,

and what you see down there is light and that's the difference. I don't know I can't even begin to express what I what I would love to do is to communicate as much as possible the jeopardy the vulnerability it's. This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin. It's a sliver. It's immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. Consider this. There's a term for what Shatner experienced, that feeling of awe and vulnerability that comes from the rare experience of seeing Earth from space.

It's called the overview effect. We'll hear from the man who coined the term and from William Shatner himself about how his trip to space continues to impact him. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, October 25th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York, working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. It's Consider This from NPR. Frank White is an author and philosopher who's spent a lot of time thinking about what astronauts see when they're in space and how that experience can change the way they see the world after they return. He's the one who came up with the term the overview effect is a cognitive and emotional shift in a person's awareness,

their consciousness, and their identity when they see the earth from space and in space. So there's this glowing orb, which is the earth, and then behind it, there's the infinite universe. White first coined the overview effect in the 1980s. He'd been interviewing dozens of astronauts about space travel and noticed they often said the same things, like that their trip had changed them, that they felt a sense of unity and interconnectedness that they had never felt before, and that the Earth was so much more beautiful than they had ever known. Also, they said,

There's this feeling of fragility because it's in a setting that is not friendly to human life. White explains that it's an uncomfortable realization for many space travelers that while our beautiful planet is able to sustain life in the vastness of outer space, humans cannot survive without special equipment. More than one astronaut comes back realizing how incredibly precious the Earth is how unique it is there's no other planet

like it in the solar ecosystem that we know of and you may have already had an environmental awareness and a realization you know that species are becoming extinct and that we are creating global warming and climate change. And you may have already had it, but it's like a lot of the other aspects of the overview effect. The experience of it is more powerful than the intellectual knowledge of it. In other words, astronauts may know that the Earth is fragile before leaving the planet, but seeing the planet from space can turn that knowledge into a feeling of responsibility, a sense that this tiny blue dot is our only home and that we must take care of it. It's an experience White hopes many people will get to

have, including himself, whenever he actually makes it into space. I'm actively working to get there. I've entered contests, and I'm also talking to various carriers about it. And yeah, I'm working on it. William Shatner wrote about his journey in the Blue Origin capsule and how it changed him in his new memoir, Boldly Go. He told me that he didn't want to play with the weightlessness, the way he had seen others do in footage of past space exploration. Instead, what he wanted to do was focus on the rare vantage point he had, gazing at the Earth from afar. So I scrambled to a window and held on to the edge of the window and peered out at space. And I looked over my right shoulder to where we were going. And much like a screen suddenly appearing, I saw the blackness of space. That blackness was the blackness you see when they close the door in a cave.

You lose your balance. And he had two words to describe how he felt at that moment. Exultant queasiness. In his book, Shatner used another two words to describe his experience, overwhelming sadness. I asked him to explain what it was that overcame him when he saw the planet from so far away. Well, it wasn't the planet. It was the death that I saw in space and the life force that I saw coming from the planet, the blue, the beige, and the white. And I realized one was death and the other was life. When I stepped out of the vehicle, I was overwhelmed by an emotion I couldn't identify right away. It was so unexpected.

I was crying. I didn't know what I was crying about. It took me, I had to go off someplace and sit down and think, what's the matter with me? And I realized I was crying about. It took me, I had to go off someplace and sit down and think, what's the matter with me? And I realized I was in grief. Can you put into words now, when you think about that moment after you landed, why were you so profoundly sad? Because I saw more clearly than I have with all the studying and reading I've done,

the writhing, slow death of Earth and we on it. And it'll take a few years for it to eclipse, but I dedicated my book, The Boldly Go, to my great-grandchild, who's three now, coming three, and the dedication saying it's them, those youngsters who are going to reap what we have sown in terms of the destruction of the earth. I mean, everything, everything. And in the meantime, we've got a war and we've got the kind of politics that don't lead to a communal solution to global warming, instead of getting better, it's getting worse. So I wept.

I wept for the earth because I realized it's dying. Shatner is 91 now, and he says that journey from one year ago has proven more meaningful than he could have ever predicted. I mean, it's one thing to say, yes, you know, the earth is so small. But when you drive cross country, for example, I've done it every which way many, many times. The roads are limitless. They disappear to the horizon and you drive for an hour and they still disappear. And you think, my God, this is going on forever. It isn't that at all. It's a little tiny rock with an onion skin air around it. That's how fragile it all is. It's so fragile. We hang by a thread and it's a gossamer thread. It's a spider's thread. It isn't a cotton thread where you can see it. We're just

dangling. Ever so delicately. Ever so delicately. William Shatner, Star Trek legend, and very briefly, a space traveler in real life. We heard additional reporting in this episode from producer Enrique Rivera. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.