My Astronaut Career Never Got Off the Ground

It turns out I won’t be going into space after all.

I was intrigued when I first heard that civilians were going to be included on an upcoming SpaceX mission around the moon.

I’ve always been a fan of space flight. And I have a great respect for astronauts — Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard for instance — as well as the people on the ground who make it happen.

I loved watching last year’s SpaceX flight. It reminded me of the old NASA missions.

I figured the cockpit on the upcoming flight would be full of seasoned astronauts. You know, professionals who had dedicated their lives to flight. People who get up and run 20 miles every day then spend the rest of their waking hours training for every possible scenario.

They would be veteran Air Force pilots, space station commanders. There might even be a space shuttle veteran or two on there.

And I had the tag-along civilians pictured in the backseat trying to catch cheese puffs in their mouths, arguing about the radio and hitting each other on the arm.

After having enough, the irritated mission commander would say, “Don’t make me stop this rocket,” every 100,000 or so miles.

But that’s not the way it’s going to work.

From what I understand now, the four-person crew is going to be made up entirely of civilians. And, the flight could take place by the end of the year.

I won’t be applying, because I can’t learn to help fly a rocket before the end of the year.

It takes me 10 minutes to remember what to do every time I need to make the microwave cook on 70 percent power.

Mission control would be saying, “ten, nine, eight…,” and I would be thinking, “What’s that red blinking thingy?”

The main dude on this flight is named Jared Isaacman, a tech entrepreneur who owns an eCommerce platform and is a “pilot on the side” according to an ABC news story.

To me, that means he is a hobbyist pilot.

I’m a hobbyist guitar player. But you wouldn’t pay $85 dollars for a ticket plus whatever a concert T-shirt costs these days to hear me play. 

One of the other occupants on the mission will be someone who uses Isaacman’s online company. This person will be picked by a panel of independent judges.

The flight supports St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Isaacman reportedly donated $100 million to St. Jude as a part of the initiative.

That’s a fabulous and generous effort, and I applaud him for it.

The third person on the flight will be a worker at St. Jude.

The winner of the fourth seat was decided by a raffle.

This is the cheese puffs guy.

This whole process of picking the crew reminds me of the feeling you get when you show up for jury duty and see someone who you desperately don’t want to be on a jury with because they don’t look like they’d be very good at it.

Except this is a 239,000 mile trip into space.

Regardless though, when they lift off, I’ll be glued to the TV, and I’ll be pulling for them.

I just hope someone on board knows what that red blinking thingy means.