Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Space Travel

"Mom, don't you want to go to space?" That is my 36 year-old son talking or should I say babbling like a four-year old. I must do something to my kids that their brains shrink when they see me. Or could it be that they want to (pow!) send me to the moon?

This discussion came about because a rich Iranian-born lady has reserved a seat in the first "successful" (!) privately financed manned trip into space, called SpaceShipOne, backed by Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen.

Each seat costs 40 million dollars. What I have in dollars is confined to my billfold and I am not Iranian born. In addition, I am the kind who sits at the computer as long as time allows and the rest of the time moves about to do only the most needed things. It would be a sight...just to watch me take the rigors of training, the cramped conditions, and the spaceship jetlag.

The news said: "We have a lot of white male astronauts," said George Whitesides of the National Space Society, a nonprofit group that advocates space travel. "To have someone different is great. It enables girls and women to identify more with space and talk about being a space explorer someday."

I have yet to explore my own house, thank you.

As to my son, I think I'll get him a dinosaur picture book for his 37th birthday.