Why I Want To Go To Space

On October 13th, 2021, William Shatner went to space in Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space shuttle. At 90 years old, this made him the oldest living person to ever visit space. In his book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wander”, he details his experience beginning with his training and preparations, to the moment he viewed Earth outside the space shuttle window:

“I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.” (Shatner, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wander)

Many astronauts report feeling intense awe at the sight of earth from space, but not Shatner. When the rest of the Blue Origin crew began performing summersaults and backflips, enjoying the weightlessness of space, Shatner, instead, felt the incessant need to peer out of the shuttle window and witness, once and for all, our planet from above. With this, he reported feeling immense sadness and grief. Despite the wonders of space displayed in iconic science fictions films like Star Trek, the old actor could not reminisce on his space-ship flying, alien-slaying past, and instead, witnessed what truly lies beyond the atmosphere of Earth:

“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. 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.” (Shatner, Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wander)

He is experiencing what is called the “Overview Effect”: a spiritual and emotional phenomenon reported by astronauts who have witnessed Earth from space. It is described to encompass powerful feelings of self-transcendentalism precipitated by an overwhelming visual stimulus. The effect recontextualizes our understanding of humanity; it deconstructs the concepts of race, gender, religion, politics, and economics into pure arbitrary abstractions of human consciousness. But with greater magnitude comes the realization of Earth and mankind’s fragility against the formidable nature of the universe. In other words, you realize how temporary everything is compared to the endless void of space, and all the worries that exist on our planet are really meaningless nonsense. And this is the intense grievance Shatner described carrying in his heart the moment he gazed at that small, orbital mass that houses 4.5 billion years of epic, gravity-bending history. 

So when I read this story of someone who described in vivid detail the torture and despair of witnessing our planet from above, I felt the strangest sense of familiarity. While I’ve never been to space, I feel a similar sense of despair when looking at the night sky. I got to thinking, in all the years of my life I’ve wished to escape into the deep recesses of the universe, would I be willing to experience this same feeling?

And almost immediately, I looked toward the stars and thought: “Yes, I absolutely would.”

The simple phrase “black emptiness” roared through my being in a melodious symphony, which made me feel the most intense feeling of escape I’ve ever experienced. Even now, as I recall this transformative epiphany, my mind diverts from the keyboard and stares towards my bedroom ceiling, imagining my gaze piercing through the roof and into the galaxy. 

I have always wanted to go to space. Like most kids, I was in love with constellations, spaceships, and the idea of silly little green aliens who spoke funny. When the inevitable lesson on ancient Greece came in elementary school, I remember feeling so interested in the omnipotent gods and goddesses who ruled over the Earth and the cosmos. I would stare at the sky searching for Cygnus, Orien’s Belt, and of course, the Big Dipper. I felt as if space held the infinite questions I carried in my curious mind.

But it wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic ensued that my desire to go to space exploded in a supernova of passion and intensity. Like many others in quarantine, I fell into a deep, uncomfortable depression that catalyzed a sense of urgency to escape. The mind does funny things when left to its own devices, and immediately, mine traveled to the outer realms of the universe. With the aching pain of loneliness ravaging my heart, I turned towards the infinite wonder of space to guide my senseless self. I began reading article after article on astronomical discoveries. In 2020, NASA found water on the moon, as appeared in the Clavius crater, existing in concentrations equivalent to a bottle of Poland Spring water. Then they found a giant black hole 1,500 light years from Earth, closer than any other, which they nicknamed the “Unicorn”. An amateur scientist discovered a new moon orbiting Jupiter. Called Ejc0061, it belongs to the Carme group of the Jovian moons, and orbits in opposite direction of Jupiter's rotation. On Christmas Day in 2021, I followed the headlining stories of the James Webb Space Telescope’s projection into space, living vicariously through each high-resolution image it sent back to us on Earth. And then for my 19th birthday, my parents got me a telescope, so I spent the rest of quarantine staring at the Orion Nebula and craters on the moon. I would imagine the possibility of witnessing a sudden flash of light, or the image of a ship flying passed the open sky. The small lens of my telescope was a pocket of air that allowed me breath into the unfiltered atmosphere of space, and gave my constrained lungs a break from the polluted air of my small, cramped bedroom which it felt like I spent eons rotting in.

With every new story, and every waking moment spent staring at the sky, I fell deeper and deeper into myself. Like I was my own universe, I traversed the neon gas and nebulas into a paradigm of fixed stars just to feel something. What became a means of escape turned into my life’s ultimate question; what is it like up there? 

And here we have someone who finally knew. Or atleast, had the rare chance to know. What I’ve imagined to be so incredible is now claimed to be miserable. What I’ve thought to be the end all be all, the final frontier of my existence, is said to be better off unexplored. I could not bear these wicked words, yet fell into them completely. The blackness, devoid of nurturing life, so foreign to our natural instincts. How terrifying it must’ve felt to witness the beginning of all beginnings, so unrecognizable to the magnificent sound, color, and evolution of our own world. Yet his painful descriptions have only made me more curious. Perhaps it stems from my gross need to always be sure of everything, or maybe, a deep rooted escapism I’m not willing to fully admit. But something about the place I’ve thought to hold the beauty of everything actually harboring an abysmal aura of dread, only makes me more anxious to experience it myself. Perhaps the anxiety rings similarly to the feeling of being trapped behind a glass pane of ignorance, one that I familiarized myself with all those hours in quarantine. How I spent months and months researching the oddities of Earth and space, in order to evoke some kind of inspiration for my writing. Unbeknownst to me, the universe became my muse, and it is now I feel, almost a duty, to truly understand it for what it is. 

I felt the monotony of life spent living with myself and couldn’t bear it any longer. I still feel the quiet urge to stare into the sky and pray the hand of a primordial being comes and takes me away into the starry abyss. How can I stay here, so small, and so unknowing, when there exists an endless world of every possibility imaginable? And as a writer, it is the biggest pain in the world to want to know more. To know there are stories out there, as monumental as an entire galaxy of sentient beings, or as small as a space rock floating amongst debris. There exist stories in every spec of space. The universe, at its core, is a massive library of cold, dead books waiting to be opened. And I can’t help but feel the crushing weight of every gravity-swallowing black hole knowing I may never get to read them. From the catastrophic collision which began our universe, to the painful first breath of life experienced by the first land animal, to the moment a bipedal ape could tell the clouds above looked a bit like faces, it all started out there.

And it is this painful revelation that urges me to never stop thinking. The beauty of the universe is that it is just there. Many try to rationalize the purpose of this space; whether it be the domain of some all-knowing creator, or a hologram tricking us all on land. These stories are beautiful, but I prefer to imagine it as some enormous, strange coincidence; a place that just so happens to exist, and just so happened to generate more existence. And with this, I get to revel in the idea that somehow, in the expanse it provides, and all the mystery it ensues, I got to exist alongside it, and even at a distance, light years away, witness from below its beauty and splendor, and spend a lifetime thinking of it like an old friend. Something that comforts me through my anguish and dread. Something that wraps its enigmatic force around my heart, ripping it out of its chest, and placing it right in front of my tired eyes. Maybe it’s all a bunch of nonsense, and this experience is entirely universal to all who gaze up at the sky, but I like to think of myself as a companion to the unknown. In my utter confusion of myself, I would rather imagine something up there knows more than I do. As I stare into the purple abyss, a gust of air passes through my lips and into the atmosphere. I feel the weight of the world ascend from my shoulders and hover into space. But as romantic as I make it, the weight can never leave my chest, and inside the cavity forms an enormous, black hole of insatiable wonder, which consumes my body in ravenous bites. 

By the grace of God, or gods, or hell, by the grace of this savage fucking universe we live in, I need to know. I want to be nose-to-nose with its magnitude. Whether it be eldritch horror, too terrifying to even comprehend, I want its essence to befall upon me a kaleidoscope of wonder. In a world built around mythologies and abstractions, some of them enchanting and life-changing, some of them oppressive and soul-crushing, nothing is more real than the universe. It’s not enough to simply stare at the stars, or look longingly through my telescope in the middle of the night, or spend hours upon hours reading astronomy articles and watching videos of Neil DeGrasse Tyson walk me through the exponential evolution of comets. Shatner says the grief of space is unbearable, but looking out of the dome in this window of Earth I’m behind must be worse. To feel so restrained, so devastatingly curious, I would rather experience the grief of the dying universe, hear the raucous song of black holes ringing against space-time, and witness the decay of prosperous planets into black-dwarf stars than sit here and think of what it all might feel like. 

That is why I want to go to space.