Time to show off my geekiness! Here it is: I'm a space freak! I love space. That's a confusing statement - what I mean is, I love
outer space. That statement itself doesn't make sense, we havn't been further than our back yard since the early 70's. But I still love it. Astronomy. NASA. Those space cowboys who perched themselves atop a bizzilion pounds of high explosives and launched themselves to the desolate wasteland of the Moon. I even love the Space Shuttle missions, that lat four missions I watched takeoff live on streaming internet TV, watched them do their space walks, laughed at their antics (while eating my breakfast and listening to NASA ground to air communications during STS-130 I heard Pilot James Dutton as CAPCOM for "warp factor 5 in 3 seconds or we're all dead!") and woke up at 3am to watch them land. I wont get into the politics here, the cancellation of the Apollo missions just as they were getting good at it, the cancellation of Project Constellation before it even go off the ground,. literally. Just put it this way; it is my lifes ambition to see a person walk on Mars. Ideally that person would be me, but I don't really think that's gonna happen. I never wanted to be an Illustrator, I wanted to be an Astronaut. Me, short, fat, english lesbian who barely passed her science GCSEs. Still, if NASA need an Illustrator in space I heartily volunteer! I even built my own space suit!
This suit I built myself (ok, my mum sewed on the command stripes and took the legs up since they were about a foot too long) for my friend's birthday last week. It was dress up as movie charecters, I was going as Jim Lovell, as played by Tom Hanks in Apollo 13. Really it was just an excuse to make an astronaut costume and wear it around the house. The helmet was a the hardest part; I spent a couple of weeks combining papier mache, mod rock, paint and foil and varnish. Just luck as well, as the foil I picked up at the local scrap store for another project is one way, so when I'm wearing the helmet I can (just about) see (about 2 feet afront of me in good light).
