William Shatner hits back at Prince William's criticism of space travel; says it can protect Earth

William Shatner does not agree with Prince William's criticism that billionaires should focus on saving the Earth instead of space travel, and claims that making other parts of space habitable could save our planet as well.

The "Star Trek" star recently became the oldest person to go to space at the age of 90. He rode with three other people on a Blue Origin rocket, a company headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and spent ten minutes in space. Not only Bezos, but other billionaires like Elon Musk and Sir Richard Branson have also organised such space travel trips.

Just a day after Shatner's space trip, Prince William gave a strong-worded interview to BBC that saving Earth should come before space tourism, saying, "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."

Shatner responded to William's criticism in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight, and claimed that space travel is also a way to get polluting industries off of Earth. He said about the British royal, "He's a lovely, gentle, educated man, but he's got the wrong idea."

The actor said that the idea behind the Blue Origin flight was "not to go, 'Yeah, look at me. I'm in space!'" but another "baby step" to progress. "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," he added.

However, Shatner's comments have not gone down well with the Twitter users who were not too happy with the idea of polluting the rest of space with our industries. One person tweeted, "Captain Kirk is off the deep end. Power plants in space!!!! How much will that cost?" while another commented, "Things most people don't care about–Rich, old, white guys shooting themselves into space... Fix Earth. Stop polluting so much. Fight climate change. Help us become more sustainable. Those things are what people care about."