The Spaceman

You may remember the old joke. What do you do, if you see a Spaceman? Park in it man.

Yes I know what you're thinking, groan, but I love the irony of it.

You think it is referring to an alien being from the vastness of the Galaxy or at the very least an astronaut high above, orbiting the earth in the space station, but no, its referring to a small piece of tarmac that is always three inches too small, no matter what car you are driving.

I've always been fascinated by space and space travel, I can't remember the Apollo missions I wasn't quite one when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and only four when Gene Cernan left it for the last time (to date) in 1972, but I do remember the Voyager probes being launched in 1977 with the golden records and photos of life on earth.

I remember the first Space Shuttle launch, I had to search the date, but I knew it was a Sunday in 1981, I also remember which school friend was round our house at the time.

With sadness I also remember the The Challenger and Columbia disasters. By the time the Shuttle program was cancelled, for me it had got a bit boring anyway. We hadn't actually gone anywhere in decades, we had literally been going round in circles.

But in the last few weeks its back in the news. On the fortieth anniversary of their launch, Voyager 1 and 2 have just left our Solar System and are still functioning, I can even read the flight data sheets for September 2017 on NASA's website.

So something I read about as a young child forty years ago is back in the news and I can show my ten year old son the pictures of it.

It also looks we might be heading back into deep space again with Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Two people approached him earlier this year and asked to be flown around the moon, in his usual uber cool style he said something like, 'Why not, will the end of 2018 be all right?' (I hope they can take some high resolution photos of the moon to put the conspiracy hoax theories to bed once and for all, so that one of my all time heroes Buzz Aldrin doesn't have to hit anyone again.) Mr Musk also plans manned Mars missions sometime in the next decade followed by colonies in the decade after that.

The Space Shuttles were in NASA'S words reusable, but needed refurbishment of all major systems after each flight, the quickest ever turnaround was fifty-four days, SpaceX goal of reusable is hours.

If I had a degree in maths or physics I would apply to SpaceX or Tesla (his other company) and leave the East Midlands (U.K) and work for Elon Musk in California, the atmosphere around him must be electric. He doesn't seem to be able to say 'no that's impossible' but more like 'We can do that let me just grab a pad and pencil and work out how.' The giant battery he has offered to build for Australia is proof of this... 'No we haven't built anything that big before but if we don't deliver it within 100 days of the contract being signed you can have it for free.' As I said I'd love to be part of his close team, I don't think I'd ever sleep again but I don't think I would need to. But unfortunately I'm too old and not clever enough, so I don't think I'm getting that phone call anytime soon. Don't think my wife would've been keen relocating half way around the world but I'm sure he could of convinced her..

Anyway where was I? Oh yes space travel, my sons generation will be the colonists of Mars and his children's or grandchildren's generation will be the humans to follow the Voyager probes out of our solar solar system in to the Galaxy beyond. Space Travel boring? Did I actually say that?