The Turquoise Pen

My Trip on the Space Shuttle and What I Learned from It

Noël R. King

The kids at my high school could hardly believe it when they found out that I had won a big internship to go on the space shuttle trip this summer. They all think that I’m a crackup, a big loser, but I have news for them. Maybe I am a big loser, but I think I am also the one going on the space shuttle now, aren’t I?

I filled out the application (I found it in Space magazine in our beat-up school library) during English class, a nice, relaxing class where Mrs. Wilcox’s voice usually hums along in the background with words like “plot,” “setting,” and “dramatic irony.”

My friend Jimmy goes, “Psssst! What are you doing?” He sits in the desk lined up with mine just across the aisle. We both play on the football team, which is about all we have in common, him being so cool and me not. I don’t exactly weigh enough to be playing football, but who cares, man. I made the team, didn’t I?

I mouthed back, “Filling out a form!”

He goes, “Form?” with his forehead all wrinkled up. He had no clue what I was talking about. I doubt he has ever filled out a form in his entire life. I at least am good at that.

That was just a couple months ago. Now here I am, up in this crampy little space shuttle even as we speak. The liftoff was pretty amazing, although I think I must have passed out somewhere along the way because I really don’t remember much of it except that I felt like I was being smashed into my seat something awful.

The guys up here are pretty nice, along with the one woman. They showed me everything, especially how to move around and use my suit and stuff. The suit even has a place to hold my iPod, I was happy to see, although it (the suit) smells kind of rubbery and like something electric is burning.

The plan at the beginning was that we would take several days to reach the space station, where I would hang out with everybody for a couple of weeks. Then I would catch a ride back to Earth with some Russian interns who were supposed to be coming back home by then. (A plane would take me from Moscow to Washington, D.C., after we landed back on Earth.) Who knows what the plan is now, though. The second night we were up here, I was the only one hanging around this one control panel. Everybody else had all these lists of things to do, plus they were supposed to get some sleep, too, so they were not paying any attention to me, which turned out to be both a good thing and a pretty bad thing, too.

I really don’t think I bumped it that much, but there was this stick shift kind of thing right next to this one part I was holding onto, and when I just barely touched it, it moved into this different slot than the one it had been in before.

Oh my goodness. You should have seen how freaked out everybody got when they saw how way off course we were just a few hours later. Instead of getting ready to dock up with the space station, we were honing in on Jupiter’s moons, or at least we were heading enough in that direction that we could start seeing them more and more clearly. I did not tell anybody about the possible stick shift incident. I am just an intern. What in the world would they want to hear from me for at a time like that?

Soon after that I called my mom by using that satellite communicator thing they have up here. My dad was still at work when I called because I forgot that Earth is like a bazillion hours either behind or ahead of us here, and my mom just happened to be home that day. She wanted to know if I was behaving, and I said, “Of course, Mom! I am a senior, for goodness sakes! I know how to behave!”

I didn’t tell her about the stick shift thingy incident. Why give her something else to worry about, what with her son already being such a loser as it is?

“Alright, then, honey,” she said. “You be good.”

“Of course, Mom,” I said. “See you soon, bye!”

I think I will probably wait until I am really old, like maybe 50, before writing my tell-all book about how I really messed up this space shuttle trip. Because now we have been floating around up here for more than a month, trying real hard to get back on track to dock with that pesky space station somewhere out here. They say if we don’t get there soon we might need a rescue ship to come on out here and get us down.

I kind of think that would be fun, but secretly I feel more than a little worried that the longer we stay up here the more chance there is of me just babbling it all out about the stick shift incident. So, really, I just want to get off of this thing now and go back to my house on Cleveland Street, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America, (holy, blessed) Earth.

I am done with space for now, although it has been real fun for the most part and I have learned a lot through my adversities up here. Especially the part about how one little bump can really change things!

—As circumstances warrant, through her Turquoise Pen column Noël R. King, Scottsville, Virginia, reports on strange and wonderful or worrisome things, including bumping a shuttle stick not all that hard.