Dad-Life Crisis
Thanks to sobriety and SpaceX, I want to be an astronaut again. From the age of five to fifteen, I wanted to be an astronaut or an aerospace engineer. I gave up because I wore glasses, and a friend told me that astronauts need perfect eyesight (Not true, should have googled it). Then I learned that calculus was not my calling and we were destroying the world with global warming. So I settled for a new dream job of being a stoner-dirtbag-mountaineer-scientist (in that exact order, as it turned out). I'm grateful to have survived that phase.
Now at home with a one-year old, and being clean and sober except for too much coffee, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future of humanity and listening to podcasts. On the Space News Pod, I heard that NASA would be opening up another round of astronaut applications. The two paths to becoming a NASA astronaut are for military test pilots or scientists with a master's degree. My optometrist told me that a lot of Air Force pilots get corrective eye surgery, and that I could still join up until I was 28. That was when I was 27, two years ago. So, while that podcast had started me dreaming about space again, I was pretty sure that that starship had already sailed for me. I pouted for the rest of the day, and was almost too embarrassed to tell Mariah why (Dad-olescent behavior I've heard this called).
I did some googling the next day, just to be sure, and learned that the Air Force had moved their maximum recruitment age from 27 to 39. Plus, they had a shortage of pilots, which they hoped to remedy by not making them do as much paperwork. It was a sign from the cosmos. For the next week, I obsessed over joining the Air Force to become a test pilot and get into the astronaut program. I figured I could join up, hire a live-in nanny, bop down the road to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and see what this dad-bod can do. I'd come back on the weekends to be a loving husband and father and dog owner. As a test pilot, I’d make a hundred grand a year, so Mariah wouldn’t be left wanting, and I’d get a month paid vacation, so I could still rockstar in to Bristol Bay and run the fishing boat for most of salmon season.
I told Mariah (my wife). She listened and nodded. She'd had similar ideas a month postpartum. Her fifteen hour labor that almost ended in a c-section had not stopped her from wanting more children. It had made her want to become a doctor. The doctors and nurses who delivered our son were Jedi warriors who brought life into the world. One of Mariah’s degrees was in biochemistry, so she had considered being a doctor before, but seeing seeing them in action made it raw and real.
With her support, and after a couple days of drooling over officer training school boot-camp videos online, I called the recruiter in Denver. "I'm interested in joining up," I said.
"Great," he said with a warm drawl.
"I'm uh, sort of a nontraditional applicant I guess. I have a bachelor's degree and I'm 28. Is there any chance that I could become a pilot?"
"Do you have any flight experience?"
"Uh, no," I said, and could feel the blood in my cheeks.
"Well then, I'd say it's very very unlikely. I've never seen someone without prior flight experience be selected for the pilot program."
"Oh. Ok. Well thanks for your time."
"Is there anything else you'd be interested in doing?"
"Uh, no. I was just seeing if there was a chance I could fly."
"Ok... Well, have a nice day."
"Thanks, take care."
I wondered why else someone would join the Air Force, other than to fly. I should have asked him about the pilot shortage. I started moping again. "What's the matter?" Mariah asked when she got home.
"Nothing. I'm fine." I said.
When we were in bed that night, she said, "I don't even want to be around you this weekend if you're going to be like this. What is your deal?" She's a nordic ski coach, and I had planned to bring the baby and dog to meet her in Steamboat Springs where she had a race. The assistant coach had agreed to drive home with the team, so she could stay an extra day. I'd booked a room at a dog-friendly motel and reserved a Pack-n-Play. On the way back, she wanted to show me some skiing around Rabbit Ears Pass, where we could try out the hand-me-down baby trailer with ski attachments that I'd been meaning to try all winter. All week, whenever the baby was napping, I'd been bringing the video baby monitor down to the basement where I would tinker on the trailer and swear, and check the baby monitor and go back to tinkering and breaking things worse and swearing.
"No, honey, I'm sorry," I said. "I really want to go. I got the hotel and everything, and Randy (our dog) and me really need to get out of the house."
"So what's going on?" She asked again.
I took a deep breath and said, "I talked to a recruiter today. He said he'd never heard of anyone being selected as a pilot without having flight experience already."
"I'm sorry, honey," She said.
"It was a crazy idea anyway." I said. "I feel fucking ridiculous."
She said, "Yeah, that one was pretty out there."
"Thanks for humoring me," I said. "I love you so much."
"I love you. I totally get it." She said.
Right now, the only other way to be a NASA astronaut is with a master's degree in science (Mariah offered me hers, since she does not want to leave this planet). When I tried to get a master’s degree myself, it didn't go so well. My experience was that all roads in grad school are paved with pretentiousness and python computer code.
NASA isn't the only one selecting American astronauts anymore, though. With SpaceX, there's hope for those without a high rank in the military or Academia. Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire fashion tycoon, has purchased all seven seats on SpaceX’s first planned flight around the moon. It's a test run of the Starship-Super Heavy slated for 2023, before missions that will land on the moon, then Mars. The Starship-Super Heavy will be fully automated. Mr. Maezawa intends to bring along only artists, to see how they will be inspired by the journey. The project is called #dearMoon. Maybe I can write my way into space, in a creative nonfiction kind of way. I believe I have #TheWriteStuff.
If I can't make Mr. Maezawa like me, maybe I’ll give that master’s degree another shot. Or I could wait a bit longer, until more general labor is needed on the Moon or Mars. I think all the camping and dangerous stuff I did in wild places during my dirtbag days could pay off. Then I drove school buses in the mountains of Colorado for two winters, until I became a father. Now I’m obsessed with making as little waste as possible around the house, what with cloth diapering, composting and recycling more than Mariah thinks is reasonable. It might be more reasonable on Mars. Commercial fishing has taught me how to make do, mechanically, and given me practice at being social while seasick in cramped quarters, all while sleep-deprived.
I don’t think going to space is the only, or even the best way to preserve humanity, but it’s a way. It’s a way that inspires me. Not everyone wants to go to space, but I do. Not everyone is capable of working in space. I’d like to find out if I am.