Looking for a ride into space…

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I’d been covering prison breaks and politics and refugees and killers and dopers. And then lately I’d done some work on the space program.

Science stuff, explanatory stuff. What makes the shuttle go. The cooling system that keeps the auxiliary power boosters from overheating tends to ice up. So it’s got a heater. But that gets too hot, so it’s got a cooling system. And so on.

One day I get a call from a long-time space writer. Wants me to know NASA has just published a book of what it thinks is some of the best writing about the program.

Some of your stuff is in there, he says.

Well I think that’s pretty cool and we talk awhile about the book and how NASA has a portion of its funding devoted to education, how it may be the only federal agency that takes the public relations job truly to heart.

Great people, the folks at NASA.

In the midst of this chat, he mentions there’s going to be a seat on a shuttle set aside for a journalist. He’s telling me about it. (This is the same program that will soon put schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe on board the Challenger, the ship that blew up just after launch on Jan. 28, 1986.) First, a teacher, then a journalist.

I interrupt.

Call em, I said.

There’s no thinking about it in my case. I’m there. Right now.

I go on to say I run about 20 miles a week, play tennis, don’t smoke, eat the occasional salad. Be happy to take a leave of absence. The truth is, I would give just about anything to fly into space

Do me a favor. Call em.

Now it’s his turn to interrupt. And he tries, but I keep talking. If they need me to do some kinda program, be happy to do it. I’ve already done some stunts in a Blue Angels fighter and that thing pulls a bunch more Gs than a measly shuttle. I’ll shave the beard.

Settle down, he says. There’s a sign-up thing.

Not interested, I say. Call whoever it is and tell em I will sign whatever they need.

The word is already out on this, he says.

I can hear it coming. So… somebody got there ahead of me?

Thousands of people, he says.

Terrific.