William Shatner is a son of a bitch (in the very best sense of the term)

[rlegro]

16. Alan Shephard and Gus Grissom...

... were the first two U.S. astronauts launched into space duing Project Mercury. Both flew 15-minute suborbital flights. No one back in the early '60s or since has ever questioned their courage, excitement or views about their voyage. In fact, they were both fairly button-down in their comments, but that may have been because they didn't have a picture window to look out of and were occupied with controls. But even in a suborbtial flight, even despite its brevity, you can look at a porthole and see the curvature of the Earth below and the blackness of space sprinkled with more bright stars than you can count, thanks to vacuum. The Blue Horizon portholes are more like picture windows.

I have no doubt the passengers on both the flights so far (who didn't really have to worry about flying the craft) had a sense of wonder rmoment. Hell, those of us still Earthbound who saw still photographs of Earth rising over the moon in front of Apollo 8 had that moment. More important, Shatner's comments seemed heartfelt and were on the mark when it came to recognizing that we indeed live on a pale blue dot and we'd better take care of it.