• Question: have you ever wanted to be in space?

    Asked by sarah2013xxx to Colm, Eoin, Joseph, Lauren, Stephen on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Eoin O Colgain

      Eoin O Colgain answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hi Sarah,

      Of course, yes, but space travel is painfully slow.

      It will take a year to reach Mars and Voyager, launched 1977, has only recently left the Solar System. The known universe is about 100 billion galaxies big and each has approximately 100 billion stars like our sun.

      If one wants to go investigate an exoplanet orbiting another star, then one will be waiting an awful long time. With these distance scales, I will be postponing space travel until we have Star Trek warp-drive technology. 🙂

      Hopefully there will be an EU funding call for this soon.

    • Photo: colm bracken

      colm bracken answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Oh Yes, its one of my dreams. In fact during the summer I was in a competition to win a space flight with Lynx deodorant. I got through the first round beating 87,000 other contestants. I made it to the semi-final in London with 200 other lucky competitors, but unfortunately that’s where it ended for me. Only 4 people made it to the final in Florida.
      I do think that I will get to space some day; there are many private companies now designing spacecraft with Virgin Galactic being the closest to getting us there. Its a good time to want to go to space!

    • Photo: Joseph Roche

      Joseph Roche answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Yes. Almost every day I think about the prospect of being in space.

      I have applied for a one-way ticket to Mars as part of the Mars One Programme. It’s a really ambitious (and ridiculous) project to put people on Mars in ten years. The catch is you can’t come home afterwards. I don’t think it will work, but if they do manage to send someone to space I would love to go.

    • Photo: Stephen Scully

      Stephen Scully answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Yes, I would like to be an astronaut. I think it would be a cool thing to do.

    • Photo: Lauren Mc Keown

      Lauren Mc Keown answered on 14 Nov 2013:

      I would love to go to the International Space Station and see the Earth from above…I think that would be the most beautiful and emotive thing anyone on Earth could dream to see. But that is not to say I would be very frightened! Astronauts often need to undergo some psychological treatment to ensure they are capable of handling the unknown environment of space for prolonged periods, so the scary side of it is not to be overlooked!

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