i am terrified of heights, right, to a point where even if i am watching a film and the camera pans down the side of a building i get all prickly and panicky and i have to look away. tom cruise in 'mission impossible' clinging to the outside of the burj khalifa building in dubai? nope. sandra bullock spinning around in open space in 'gravity'? double nope. the idiot that went up and base jumped from the edge of the atmosphere? oh haaale nope. so it might interest you to know that i am obsessed with the idea of space. like, the stars and stuff. like, the planets and moons and black holes and constellations and stuff. like, when tim peake was up there and instagramming the shit out of the earth from above, and the milky way, and the other oddities that occur up there, i was all "yeaaaah, that's a bit of me". which is weird, considering the former point i made, about me and heights.
it makes me wonder though, if i had the chance, would i go up there and explore in the same way i explore the world below me? i mean, i'm not living the "jet set life" so much as just taking advantage of living in a city that allows me the opportunity to get out and explore the continent and those around it, and i'm very much travelling on a prosecco budget. but, space. it's the final frontier, isn't it? and with new planets having just been discovered, and new possibilities opening up all the time up there, isn't that the next natural step? if money was no object, i like to think that yes, i would take the plunge and go for a look. i mean, i would stay safely inside the spacecraft at all times, and never, not once consider leaving my lovely space suit and heavenly oxygen mask, but.. i do want to see for myself that we are not alone.
please don't mistake that last sentence for any suggestion that i believe in aliens, because i don't. but as danny dyer put it so articulately: it's ridiculous to think we're the only things out there; there must be other life forms in our solar system - our human race can't be it, and i'm sure they - whoever they are, discovered us on earth a long, long time ago and decided they wanted nothing to do with us. and, i don't blame them really. so yeah, the thought of checking out other options has crossed my mind once or twice - especially as i'm too old for a canadian visa now. which is why when i heard that netflights had launched the TS48 spacecraft operating out of a top secret location in the lake district, i became intrigued.
if, like me, you want to become a pioneer of the netflights.space "above and beyond earth" flights, you can register your interest now. i'm going to look into it further, so... maybe i'll see you up there.
*post written in collaboration with netflights.space... happy april fool's day!
