Sir Edmund Hilary said: “Even those who are mediocre can achieve and those who are fearful can have adventure”. Could he possibly be right about this in relation to me?
I was working for IBM in the 90s and wondering what to do when retirement happened. Would I be ready for life’s next phase?
Karen, my friend and college guidance counselor was working to get certification in becoming a life coach. She wanted to use me and Deb, one of our mutual friends, as test subjects to refine her skills and technique.
One of the first questions she asked was “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?. The first thought in my mind and out of my mouth was “I want to be an astronaut”. Of course that was ridiculous. I was 40+ years old and got nauseous on boats and small planes. I wasn’t a test pilot or a scientist. I was a project manager with software development for goodness sake.
Then I got to thinking about why I responded “an astronaut”. Several memories surfaced.
I sent my nephew, Josh, to space camp at Cape Canaveral when he was young.
I saw one of the first space flights take off from Cape Canaveral... it was in the junior high school yard in Tampa, FL.
I had become a pilot while living in Alaska and secretly wanted to do more than fly single engine planes.
Well, the words had come out of my mouth and acknowledged them as true. I finally recognized that dreaming of being an astronaut was part of my life but never believed it could be achieved.
Fast forward to climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in December, 2009. We are sitting around a camp fire the evening before the ascendent and talking about adventures. I was asked what my next adventure would be. On the way to Tanzania there was a magazine article in which Sir Richard Branson was offering sub-orbital flights. That gave me the opening to tell them I had always wanted to be an Astronaut.
Since I had been to all 7 continents only space was left. Right away, Dawn, an advertising executive in NYC, said she could put together a marketing plan for me to get corporate sponsors. I wondered why a company would want to sponsor a middle aged grandmother to go into space? She seemed to feel that it could be done and mentioned several companies that might fit.
I continued to think about it off and on for the next couple years. In 2011 I heard about the Space Port being built in New Mexico and started to get excited again. My friend, Sue, and I visited it in January 2012. We spent the night in Truth or Consequences, NM then took a guided tour of the Space Port the next day.
We drove through the desert of New Mexico and the first sighting of the Spaceport was like seeing a space ship on he ground. My heart was racing and words failed me.
The excitement continued and I finally decided to take the plunge. I signed the contract and sent the deposit to Virgin Galactic. There are two types of travelers. Pioneers are those who pay $200,000 up front and Voyagers who pay a deposit of $20,000 with the remainder due before launch. I’m now # 682 on the list as a Voyager and wishing it would happen tomorrow.
Standing on the runway at the Spaceport, NM.
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