It’s safe to say that William Shatner and Prince William don’t see eye to eye when it comes to space exploration.
Just one day after Shatner traveled to space with Jeff Bezo‘s company Blue Origin, the royal criticized space travel, and while he didn’t name the Amazon founder he told BBC, “We need some of the world’s greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live.”
When asked to respond to the Prince’s comments, the Star Trek alum told Entertainment Tonight, “He’s a lovely Englishman. He’s going to be king of England one day. He’s a lovely, gentle, educated man, but he’s got the wrong idea.”
“The idea here is not to go, ‘Yeah, look at me. I’m in space.’ The landing that consumed all that…energy and people to take a look and go, ‘Oh, look at that.’ No,” Shatner clarified. “I would tell the prince, and I hope the prince gets the message, this is a baby step into the idea of getting industry up there, so that all those polluting industries, especially, for example, the industries that make electricity…off of Earth.”
“We’ve got all the technology, the rockets, to send the things up there…You can build a base 250, 280 miles above the Earth and send that power down here, and they catch it, and they then use it, and it’s there,” Shatner continued. “All it needs is…somebody as rich as Jeff Bezos [to say], ‘Let’s go up there.'”
“The prince is missing the point,” Shatner repeated. “The point is these are the baby steps to show people [that] it’s very practical. You can send somebody like me up into space.”
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