A middle aged space crisis

But first let me go back in time. I have vague recollections of the day that Neil Armstrong took that first giant leap for mankind, I was almost 4 years of age and even though it occurred in the middle of the night in Australia I was old enough to know that something significant had occurred.

This was also a milestone moment in my life as it meant that I was well on my way to outer space, as my almost 4 year old mind had already made grand plans for what I would do when I got to the moon and begun floating around in the weightless atmosphere. My parents had emigrated from England and I was going to emigrate to the moon. Oh grand plans were afoot indeed.

Photo credits: Wikimedia CC2, CC3 or NASA Uncopyrighted.

There were early setbacks though, NASA, in what my young self thought was a fairly short-sighted move decided to stop sending people to the moon in 1972, but that was nothing compared to my ability to projectile vomit whenever I entered a moving vehicle.

I was a lot more confident NASA would restart the space programme, but less confident of my condition being cured as no amount of drugs or coercion seemed to be able to abate my travel sickness ( I was going to be famous as the first space traveller to drown in their own vomit).This ironically was at its worst when I flew.

But happily as the years went by, NASA sent up Spacelab and started the shuttle programme and I outgrew travel sickness.

Outer space and the moon here I come, or so I thought. Yet the moon remained out of reach of all the space agencies throughout the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

There were no advances in technology that would mean ordinary people like me would be bathing in solar rays on the moon anytime soon.

I started to hope that some of the more outlandish plans such as the space elevator would actually come to fruition. It may sound wacky, but apparently the physics behind the idea are quite sound.

Space Elevator Explained

But alas no, space shuttles blew up and only very rich men with $20 million to spare could buy their way into space. My longing looks towards the sky became even more forlorn. 2005 and a fortieth birthday came and went and soon after America was no longer even sending men into space, let alone to the moon and no one else who had the capability were even thinking about it.

Photo CC-BY-SA-2.0; Released under the GNU Free Documentation License,

So now, at 47 years of age I am sitting here at my desk staring out at the full moon that fills the clear summer sky over Melbourne and I am feeling a real sense of melancholy.

Neil Armstrong is now dead.

Pluto (which was always one of my favourite planets because its known existence was the same age as my mum and I wore a Disney Pluto T-Shirt whilst I dreamt of and pretended to participate in moon travel as a child) is no longer a planet and my dream of luxury moon living is almost dead.

Some men buy Corvettes or Harley Davidsons when they hit a mid life crisis, but it’s not my age that is causing my ‘crisis’, so a fast bike or car just isn't going to cut the mustard. 

What do you do when you have a middle-aged space crisis? I'm even almost teary eyed when I eat a mature cheddar (because as we all know the moon really is made of cheese).

What is a man if he loses all his dreams?

Sadly I fear this is only the beginning as I have to let go of all those childhood dreams and accept that I won’t be the next Hemingway or Jagger, nor will I circumnavigate the world in a canoe.

But most painful of all, I won’t go to the moon, and man, that sucks!