See, I was brung up on the Apollo space missions, James Burke and Raymond Baxter in the BBC studios with the lunatic Patrick Moore trying to explain technical things about the moon in a language that only dedicated moonmen could understand, as a 12 year old I actually got out of bed at 3am one school morning to watch Neil Armstrong step down onto the moon and when i got to school all the other kids had done the same, and we all fell asleep in our lessons that day, luckily the teachers did too.
And so I'd love to fly in the space shuttle, it still seems like an awfully uncomfortable way to travel anywhere, but I'd love to do it anyway, and now it seems like NASA is veering more towards people like me and you rather than dedicated moonmen.
Sure they need one pilot on every mission but most of all they need builders, and thats where you and I come in. No, I'm not a construction worker but I've done a lot of DIY around the house and thats what they are looking for now because the space shuttles job for the foreseeable future is to take builders and materials up to the international space station and wait for them to finish their jobs before bringing them back home - its a sort of Ford Transit of the sky, and it is white after all.
Have a look at the latest Wikepedia entry for the current shuttle mission and then tell me that it isn't white van man and his mates off to do a cash-in-hand job ?
At the moment they're doing the proper construction stuff like putting up strutts and installing some solar power stuff, but when the international space station is properly built (I'm imagining Thunderbird 5 here) then I'm available to do a bit of painting and decorating.
Or plumbing, I'm a dab hand at plumbing with compression joints, assuming that plumbing works the same in space as it does on earth, maybe the water flows the wrong way around or something, but I'd have a go at plumbing too.
I'm no good up ladders though, I can "foot" a ladder all day long for more brave people, but I won't go above head height on a ladder, especially if its standing on grass, which it won't be in space of course, but still, we'll see how the ladder thing goes eh ?
So if anyone from NASA is reading this blog then this is my application for employment, handyman for hire.
Just one thing puzzles me - the current shuttle mission is up there for a few more days yet but the first thing that they do now is to put the space suits on and crawl all over the aircraft looking for stuff that might have been damaged on takeoff and that might cause problems on re-entry (for problems on re-entry read, burns up in a huge fireball all over three states in America).
To me thats a bit like the pilot of my holiday flight to Menorca walking down the aisle of our 737 while we're at 37,000 feet, parachute strapped to his back, telling us all "just popping out to see if the wheels will come down when we try to land in Menorca folks, toodle pip", its a bit off-putting to say the least and the fact that NASA have already stated that a rescue mission for the current crew would be launched sometime around November 11th suggests a bit of a lack of urgency , it might be just me being jittery though, I'm like this when I have to fly anywhere - don't let this put you off though NASA, I'm good with a brush.
POSTSCRIPT
I've just read that the builders on the shuttle are having problems this morning.
I should be up there now, I could sort that out for them, a software problem, I could do that.
Software problems are easy, you just reboot the PC, or reinstall the software, or download another version off the internet, or borrow your mates install disc and use that if yours is corrupted - see, I have all of the solutions, I could fix that.
But like all builders they'll all be stood around looking at the problem right now, sucking the rareified air in through their teeth and shaking their heads while telling NASA, "oooh its yer extrapolator joint pal, its a bad one, never seen one as bad as this, have you John, no neither have I, it'll cost you will this one mate, you got cash ? John can you take this man down to the cash machine ?"
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