Space for Anyone
NASA considered sending a chimpanzee to the moon to win the space race in the 1960s. It would have had to be a one way trip, but it would have kept President Kennedy’s promise. The human astronauts didn’t like that idea, nor did they like the fact that Ham the Astrochimp (pictured above), got the record for first hominid in space. If a human had flown in Ham’s place, an American astronaut would have the record for first human in space, not Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.
Sixty years later, over half of American astronauts are still military test pilots. The rest are engineers or scientists, with a master’s degree and two years of experience in their field.
NASA also suffers from a lack of funding, because modern Americans don’t want their tax dollars to pay for the privilege of space travel to some of our most already privileged citizens. The space agency’s reasoning is that they don’t want to make any more mistakes that will make them look bad and cost them money. So, NASA only wants people who are highly trained and highly paid already, because they think that gives them better odds.
The #dearMoon project isn’t much different. Instead of the best and brightest in the eyes of the U.S. Government, it will be the artsiest in the eyes of the Japanese billionaire fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa. People are comparing it to the golden ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate factory, but Charlie won’t have a chance this time. Mr. Maezawa wonders how John Lennon or Pablo Picasso would have been inspired by going to space.
To inspire a wider range of people, the space program should be a lottery. In 2017, the NASA budget was $19.6 billion, while Americans spent $71.8 billion on lottery tickets. About $45 billion of the lottery money was given back in prizes. The rest typically goes to education, state general funds, and programs for problem gamblers. All of that could stay the same, but since the prize for the space lottery would be going to space, we could double the NASA budget. We could call it The Billions and Billions Lottery, in memory of American astronomer Carl Sagan.
The catch is that for most people, going to space isn’t as appealing as winning hundreds of millions of dollars. So, the entire NASA budget might not be replaceable by a lottery, but a significant portion could. A reworking of 1960s NASA strategy could prove effective, substituting lottery winners for chimps. Taxpayers, animal rights activists, and science fiction fans could all get behind that.
At least one average person could fly on every future mission to space. They could be trained for a few months, go to space, then be set for life with book deals and talk shows.
It would be like having the personal account of someone who sailed with Christopher Columbus, some guy off the docks who decided to huck their meat off the edge of the Earth. Back then, Columbus himself was hardly considered an adventurer. The term adventurer only referred to the people who paid for the trip. How adventurous to risk money on such a voyage! The crew might as well have been chimps for all the Spanish royals cared, but the regular folks are the ones who got to go first.
Until there’s another way, I’m spending a lot of time on usajobs.gov working on my astronaut application. I found some tips on how to apply, written up by astronaut Anne McClain. She was one of eight astronauts selected out of 6,000 applicants in 2013. That makes her a member of the 0.13%. She was an army helicopter pilot before going through test pilot school just before being hired as an astronaut. Lieutenant Colonel McClain says, “100% of people who do not apply will not be accepted.”
Keyword: people.