You all can keep the seat, just strap me to the robot arm!
…no, not that Robot Arm…
-Rav
I too would go, but only with the same odds as the average flight.
Forgive me. I think it’s rather sad that so many of you would volunteer to go even if you will certainly die. Does your life suck that much? I can’t help but think of Palestinian human bombs.
Wouldn’t it be a pisser if you blew up on the pad?
Please don’t hate me.
Yojimboguy I think you are misunderstanding the motives here. My life doesn’t suck. Not at all.
But if my death somehow kept the dream alive, and furthered mankind then I would say I had spent it well. probably better than Joe Sixpack sitting on the couch watching WWF.
$.02
I don’t think it’s so much a question of my life sucking so much that I’d like to die. It’s more that going into space is something I’ve always wanted to do but know that the odds of it happening now are pretty damn close to zero. (Unless NASA starts a “send up overweight federal employees into space just to show we can do it” program.) When the shuttle program was starting and there was talk of sending civilians into space, a bunch of us were saying that they would volunteer for any sort of experimentation just for the chance to go.
Obviously, I’d prefer to come back alive, but I’m fifty years old and except for my wife there is no one who depends on me for anything; that’s not to say I wouldn’t be missed (I hope), but as I get older my perspective on a lot of things has changed. More and more of the things I always hoped to be able to do one day have slipped from my grasp, in some cases forever. If I can’t die at 150 jumping out of a window to escape a jealous husband, then dying in space seems a reasonable alternative.
Oh, and yojimboguy, if I ended up blowing up on the pad, well, at least I died trying.
Is it the only way I can get into space? It is? Can I take my notebook and pen? Please? Fine, I’ll dictate the damn poems to Houston. Line breaks and all. Do I have to quit smoking? Okay, I will. I’ll do it.
How do the lines Kirk quotes at the end of Wrath of Khan go?
The reason I asked if folks would be willing to accept a one way trip is because I personally believe that the noblest thing a human being can do is to die for something they believe in. Doesn’t make the cause right, but it does say something about the person who sacrificed him/herself for it.
Better to have my atoms scattered across the heavens, than to die a senile old man. Those of you who wouldn’t risk it all, I understand your reasons, but I’d have to say that even if I had the best wife and kids imaginable, and NASA said they wanted me for a suicide mission, I’d go. I’d go with no regrets, and since I had the best wife and kids, they’d understand that need. (Of course, the odds of any of that happening are non-existant, but that’s another matter…)
Tuckerfan, I think that’s actually from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. I agree with you about dying for one’s beliefs. I admit I’ve never valued my own life that highly, in part because we all die sometime. What better way than in pursuit of a dream or in defense of one’s beliefs. If my Wiccan friends are right, I’ll get another go-round; if my Christian friends are right, I’ll be in heaven. Either way, what’s to lose? (Although I suspect if the Wiccans are right, I’ll be giving myself a good talking to in between lives!) I’ve tried dying in pain and agony. I’ll take dying in pursuit of a dream, even though, to be brutally realistic, that will also probably entail a certain amount of pain and agony.
CJ
If you are interested in that side of the space program you should consider going up with the Russians instead. They have vodka in small plastic bags for their Cosmonauts. My mother-in-law works with the Russian space program and she usually brings some of those when she visits.
To reiterate, I’d still go on a trip into space, even if I knew for certain that I’d die. After all, “What is death, but the greatest adventure of all?” Or, in another man’s words, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away!”
I’ll swap labor for passage – I’ll help train the first few flights in the zero-gee simulator pool, while I’m waiting for my flight.