It's less upbeat than one might have expected from our first Starfleet captain in space and not as inspirational as the Star Trek title sequence, but Shatner was clearly affected by the experience. He had more to say:

Suddenly you're through the blue and you're into black and you're into, you know, it's raaaa, it's mysterious and the galaxies and things, but what you see is black. And what you see down there is light. And that's the difference.

The launch and lead up were livescreened and can be viewed on YouTube.

You'll probably want to watch the whole flight - it's not very long - but here are some timestamped links if you want to skip to particular bits:

• Launch : 2:22:47.
• Rocket touchdown : 2:30:00.
• Capsule touchdown : 2:32:10.
• Post landing : 2:45:10.
• Shatner's speech : 2:46:20.

For people old enough to remember the days of NASA single use rocket launches, the rocket touchdown is potentially fascinating. Blue Origin's reusable rockets complete with moving parts feels a little bit like watching sci-fi come to life.

Post disembarkation, other crew are greeted by friends / family but Shatner appears to be alone and tries to strike up a conversation with Jess Bezos. Bezos listens briefly but calls for the waiting bottle of champagne and pops it.

Then he returns to Shatner to listen to his thoughts.

A commentator during the flight mentions that one of the other passengers, Chris Boshuizen, is the first single nationality Australian to go into space.

Third Australian born.

That's a rather significant Australian angle which we previously missed.

Blue Origin also posted a short video of the crew in space on twitter.

[ Main Image: William Shatner after flight. Credit: Blue Origin via YouTube. ]

References

Blue Origin (October 13, 2021). Replay: New Shepard Mission NS-18 Webcast. YouTube.

Blue Origin [@blueorigin] (October 13, 2021). This was the voyage of the RSS First Step today. Its mission: encounter Earth from incredible views at apogee. Twitter.