Actor Tom Hanks said that he was invited to blast off on Blue Origins’ rocket before William Shatner, but he refused to leave the stratosphere for on reason.
“Is it true that you were asked to go to space by Jeff Bezos before William Shatner?” Jimmy Kimmel asked during the Oscar winner’s Tuesday appearance on his late night show.
“Well, yeah, provided I pay,” Hanks responded. “And, you know, it costs like 28 million bucks or something like that. I’m doing good, Jimmy. I’m doing good. But I ain’t paying [28 million] bucks.”
“You know what? We could simulate the experience of going to space right now. It’s about a 12-minute flight. Is that about it? We could all do it in our seats right here,” Hanks joked before reenacting a space flight from a violent blast off, to floating in space, then a turbulent reentry into the atmosphere.
“I don’t need to spend 28 million bucks to do that. I can do that at home,” he remarked, before jabbing at Bezos that he might take the trip if it was free, to experience “the joy of pretending I’m a billionaire.”
Bezos has spent the last week flexing that he is in fact, a billionaire. The former Amazon CEO pledged nearly a billion dollars to the Great Green Wall initiative to help restore African land by planting more than 20 million trees on the continent to combat desertification.
He also dropped $78 million on a 14-acre Hawiian estate in Valley Isle’s La Perouse Bay, and is reportedly looking to purchase additional off-the-market ranches in the area.
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