You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Spending a year in space.
Can you imagine floating for a year, not feeling your own weight, not feeling the pressure of gravity pulling you down.
Your beer gut can float like an oil spill on a calm sea.
Your saggy boobs can levitate in the ether of forever.
Kim Kardashian’s butt can become its own gravitational black hole as if it is not all ready that.
On Friday, astronaut Scott Kelly and a Russian cosmonaut blasted off into the record books of mankind.
These intrepid explorers will spend the next 342 days on the International Space Station.
Most missions are 6 months or shorter. Half a year? That’s child’s play. Kids with an E ticket at EPCOT can do 6 months.
But a year floating in the lonely void of outer space?
342 days off planet, weightless, circling Mother Earth, secured to life by a thin thread of gravity and a space ship that has been known to break down more than a Winnebago on a cross country trip.
342 days in the black void of beyond. Nobody has even come close.
This is not something I’d do.
342 days without the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, the loving caress of a Sonic Chocolate shake?
NO CAN DO.
I’d rather get in a microwave oven and have Charles Manson push the popcorn button.
Why are the astronauts doing this?
Because they can. Or at least to prove if they can.
342 days spinning around the planet like a champagne cork sailing over Times Square is a cosmic roll of the dice.
What could go wrong at 17,500 miles an hour, dodging solar flares and space debris and possible Apollo 13 like implosions?
Try hitting a grain of space dust at 17,500 miles an hour. That’s like running into a cement truck in a convertible without touching the brakes.
Bam. It will get your attention.
At 17,500 mph X 342 days; the astronauts will travel 143 million miles.
That’s serious frequent flyer action.
Does NASA charge for extra bags?
143 million miles? That’s at least 2 tanks of gas in a Nissan Leaf.
The astronauts will see 11,000 sunrises, while you and I will see 684.
11,000 sunrises? That’s enough to give a Rooster laryngitis.
11,000 sunrises? That’s more than a Vegas Hooker sees in a career on the Strip.
342 days in space. Wow. I can barely do 342 days on Earth.
342 days is twice the normal mission.
NASA’s new motto: “double your pleasure. Double your fun.”
Actually NASA never says this.
But Russian mail order brides who have twins frequently do.
But I digress.
So why are the astronauts going into space for a year?
Because they are some bad mamma jammas. They are space cowboys of the 3rd kind. They got balls of steel.
They are made of the right stuff.
342 days off planet, hurtling around the earth in a flying out house with walls as thick 6 layers of tin foil?
It is the equivalent of Columbus’ crew sailing to the edge of the Earth, and then really falling into oblivion.
COLUMBUS YOU DUMB SCHMUCK!
Those are the last words anyone ever hears as the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria roll off into the cosmic dumpster.
What could go wrong? And what to do if it does?
You can’t call AAA when your space battery goes dead.
NASA is a glass half full organization and it is sending Kelly into space to test the human body, physically, emotionally, psychologically.
If humans are going to travel Mars and beyond, a 500 day mission, then we’ve got to know what prolonged exposure to weightlessness and isolation does to the human body.
Can you imagine floating in space for a year? I can’t. I can’t imagine floating in the neighborhood pool for more than 15 minutes.
342 days in space? There I things I don’t want to know, don’t want to do, don’t care about.
For instance; I don’t want to hook a vacuum hose up to my junk to pee.
I don’t want to capture my sweat and urine so I can process it into drinking water. Delightful, right?
How many times can you circle the Earth and see Australia wiz by and yawn.
Will you miss human touch?
Will you miss sex?
How do you brush your teeth? where do you spit? What does floating flobs of toothpaste spit look like floating next to you while you sleep?
It’s all so foreign, so strange.
I guess when you take one gigantic leap for mankind, the unknown is the only constant.
It seems lonely.
I can feel lonely in a shopping mall at Christmas time.
I can’t imagine being alone staring out a coconut sized port hole looking at the interminable void.
I can’t imagine floating and dreaming and wondering as I look down upon the continents what great things I am missing.
Pizza and beer and billiards and the list is too long to go on.
Would it be exciting? Would it be hard to endure?
Time is relative.
When you see 11,000 sunsets, does it even matter anymore?
Sunsets are special. They are a goodbye kiss on a good day.
Sunrises are even more special. They signify you have done something extraordinary and you are witnessing the start of something new.
Unless you are Thelma and Louise and they signify that you have just jumped a canyon in an open air vehicle.
But 11,000? Would you even know what the hell is going on anymore?
Earth-normal would be erased like chunks of the Watergate tapes.
I wish these space pioneers well. I couldn’t do it for a day, no less 342 days.
I have no interest in going to Mars. I’m glad someone is going, but I’m mostly glad it ain’t me.
Living on Earth is tough enough, some days.
I am not Christopher Columbus.
It takes a special human to set sail for something so unknown that expecting the worst is the only thing you can really be sure of.
That’s what makes the human spirit so indomitable.
What I deem impossible, two astronauts consider a privilege.
God’s speed to you brave pioneers.
Life’s Crazy™