Although I accept that these flights are a symbolic memorial, if you really want to go into space, or be involved in space, then you need to give some serious consideration to how you can do that during your lifetime. If the one thing you really want to do in life is fly in space, then re-mortgage the house and sign-up as a space tourist. Your children may not appreciate you blowing their inheritance on five minutes of weightlessness, but at least you get to experience spaceflight when you are alive (and it would be worth it just to see their faces when you tell them).
If you are young and bright, join the space industry or make a tonne of money and start your own – like the founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk. Alternatively, get involved in the increasingly large number of amateur space projects and put your name to part of a spacecraft (a topic I will be returning to in the coming weeks). With space opening up, this is an exciting time. You do not just have to go there when you’re dead.
Which brings me to my other favourite Star Trek quote, spoken by a young McCoy in the latest film ‘Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.’
And you want to be buried there?
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