We’re a nation of spacers, not least politicians

WHEN I was a little girl I wanted to be a prima ballerina or an astronaut. Indeed, around age seven, these didn’t even seem to be mutually exclusive goals, much less unattainable ones.

A growth spurt (not to mention a lack of ballet lessons) put paid to the first, and travel sickness to the second. But I’m still a bit of a space nut. One of the most amazing trips I ever took was to Cape Canaveral and the SpaceX rocket, which docked with the ISS last Sunday, brings the intriguing prospect of space tourism and maybe even one day populating other planets ever closer.

I’ll probably never make it there, but Dr Norah Patten from Ballina will. She, like me, visited a Nasa launch site when she was younger and it filled her with a passion. She went on to study aeronautical engineering and is set to become the first Irish astronaut to make it to space.

She may not be the last either. Nasa’s HR chief was in Dublin recently and claims that the Irish have traits which make them ideal space explorers. Robert Gibbs says our natural creativity, adaptability and sense of humour are what they look for in astronauts, and it’s recruiting for its moon and Mars missions currently.

There are 12 places available and I reckon we should bag them all. There could be State sponsorship of university programmes, extra leaving cert points for engineering subjects and we should make a start by sending politicians up in a rocket to check it out. All of them, preferably.