In space no one can hear you sing and there is no breathing place. Contrary to popular, it is white, full of light and roomy.
So and so the race is on. Out of the thinning atmosphere come several rockets and variously shaped craft, trailing fiery plumes and clouds of advertising leaflets. Some imperious and rocket shaped, some weird and thoughtful. Streaking past the aging international space centre where politics were never spoken, they entered the nowhere of space. Space, the final front, back and sides, empty except for the riches and benefits of boundless raw, or at least undercooked, materials and the promise of untrodden pastures anew, did not know where to look.
The space people wrote the rules up as they went and the health and safety regs were hilarious. Many of the space gadgetry resembled ancient plastic toys with flashing parts, but they didn’t come with batteries. It was far easier to take them apart than it was to put them back together again, and there always seemed to be a nuclear reactor left over.
The rockets were often provided with a user manual in hysterical languages, although one might find some Metube guidance videos, by gifted amateurs, just outside well organised garages. Please click on ‘like’ if you find these videos useful in the depths of the solar system.
Some smaller craft, fashioned in recycled plastic, 4d printed direct into the future, took pole position. While the greater rockets jettison their booster seats and cryogenic vegetable systems in order to gain enough height, escape the earths alure, and insert themselves into orbital circles of society. A few, under resourced rockets, bounced gently along the space and atmosphere divide, showering sparks across the continental skies.
Ebony Dusk, the poorest man in the world, but under the protection and boosterism of various political upstarts, blew up several inflatable rockets whilst laughing and eating only money with chop sticks. Ebony was hell bent, and also keen that the human race visited Mars, soon, but it was probably just a status thing. If it wasn’t Mars, it would have been the highest, longest or least expensive.
Dorothy Designer, an ex-Nasa engineer and legendary snappy dresser, commanded a craft shaped in comparison to an fancy plane. Racing behind her designer goggles, her hair creating a halo about her head. She decided that speed was of the essence and accelerated close to the photon wind, arriving just after liftoff.
The Space Pirates lost the plot on the solar map and laid traps under X’s, in geosynchronous nadirs, hoping to snare a rich prize returning from the asteroid zone laden to the gunnels with silks and spices.
Some of the rocket captains thought that it was a race to the moon settlement, others headed for the top of Mars, where no life had ever existed until we turned up, casting aside food wrappers and out of date coupons. The more commercial outfits hunkered down in the asteroid belt and bored tiny holes into various lumpy objects, whilst the dreamers aimed for distant stars and were never seen again.
Inside the tiny rocket rooms, the Staronauts were only allowed to move their hair or their fingers, but never at the same time. They exercised in their sleep and did dangerous space walks on a retractable arm holding a spanner. They planned space obstacles for the other contestants, including Super Novas, Medium Size Novas and putting bananas in the exhaust thrusters. Pens and pencils floated, spinning slowly, past the port holes, finding their final rest down the back of a space seat.
The winning was unpredictable and partially controlled by facially challenged politicians in big pale buildings. Water ice, mined in lumps the size of Manhattan, a famous drink, delivered to the moon, solved many problems including who should do the washing up.
The Guardians of the Cave 