To the moon and back

So I heard in the radio (still the same Finnish one) that there's a possibility that for the first time in the history of mankind a Finnish person might get to go to space. As in put on a space suit, get into a bigass rocket ship and get launched into the altitude of 103 km. Yes indeed, why 103 km? Because apparently that's the altitude where you skip from "normal atmosphere" to"space". If you've been in the altitude of 103 km, you can say that you've been in space. Not the outer kind, but just normal space.

up up up...

Apparently NASA has chosen about 100+ people to attend  a 5 day boot camp at the Kennedy Space Center, after which 20+ of them will be chosen for the actual "spacing". This Finn, whose name I can't recall but it starts with an H (I tried to find an article covering this story in the biggest newspaper in Finland, but didn't find it??!!) is one of the people asked to join the boot camp. So naturally I thought that this dude must be some miracle child, the bionic man, brain of steel and just enough muscle to handle the hardships but not too much to not fit into the space suit. In the radio show they asked him what kind of people his opponents are, and he said that one of them has climbed the Himalayas and there's also a dude who's like the world champion in Taekwondoo. And our Finn? What has he done? He's been in the Finnish air force. And that's it.

My mom worked for the Finnish army for years as a nurse. She was placed in the parachute-unit, so you can imagine that there were quite a lot of injuries. Although she told me that only once had some guy come down without the parachute having opened, but luckily it was just a "small" jump so he survived. Still, from all the stories my mom has told me about the Finnish army, it seems to me that it's not exactly full of the brightest people. That's probably because in Finland it's still mandatory to go to the army, so even the dimwits have to attend, and obviously they're also the ones who have most of the accidents.

"Can you hold this hand grenade please?" "Yeah sure. Hey what's this little thing here? Maybe it's broken, I'll just pull this off..." "That's the pin you idiotttttttttttttttttnooooooooooooooobowcrashbuumbanggggggggggggg".

Attending the army is mandatory only for the guys, but some girls attend as well. Seeing that you have to work together with these people with a polyp for a brain, I can't think of any reason to go to the army if it's not absolutely necessary. But then again what do I know.

feeling so little....

So when this Finn said that he's attended the Finnish air force, I thought "oh great, well that's it then, why even bother going to the boot camp". But apparently that's like a really big deal actually, from a foreigner's point of view. They have a Facebook group for all the people attending the boot camp, and when they saw that this dude had been in the air force, they all got intimidated. Even the Taekwondoo-champ. Indeed, the reputation of the Finnish army is quite good abroad. Well, live and learn people, live and learn.

So now I'm getting all excited for this dude. How cool would it be to go in space? Me among millions of other people watched when that Redbull-guy went to the outskirts of the atmosphere, and it was wild. It was almost not credible. It was incredible.

I've been wondering that going into space would be a healthy thing for all of us to do. Recently I've been harvesting all kinds of stress and anxiety inside of me, thinking about my future and the life that I've lived so far (which is the main reason for my anxiety, because I look back and see that I've done exactly squat). Going to space, in a tiny capsule, all alone, looking down to Earth and seeing all the vastness of nothing and everything that surrounds us, knowing that we're just a tiny piece in a puzzle with hundreds of millions of pieces makes your daily struggles seem a little mundane. Earth isn't probably even the coolest piece of the puzzle with nice colors or clear outlines, no no, surely we're part of the sky or the sea. You know, those difficult pieces that you never know how to put together. Looking at a sandstorm in the Sahara desert or the disappearing rain forest would make my daily worries of forgetting my phone at home or running out of gas seem rather ridiculous. Don't get me wrong, thinking about one's future and changing the things that you don't like about your life is hugely important, and by no means insignificant, but I'm saying that sometimes you need to go far in order to see close. It's important sometimes to put things in a new perspective, and try to think about the big picture for a while before concentrating on the details.

I really hope Mr. H gets to go to space. I hope he looks at Earth and thinks about how little we are. I hope that above all he gets to experience himself from a totally different view point. Because not all of us get to go to space and rethink things. Some of us can only go as far as the local pub.

Godspeed Mr. H. To the moon and back. Or as far as the Kennedy Space Center anyway.

is there somebody out there....??