Space is described as the final frontier. Perhaps the accent should be on ‘final’. It’s not really designed for the young. All that hard radiation upsets the genes in the next generation so it’s left to us older folk to take the first trip to Mars. Not one of us below sixty. Come to that, during the trip, seventy became a memory as well. For some of us, memories are beginning to become a thing of the past as well.
Still, if we’re going to suffer cancer from radiation, well, it won’t last forever. All we had to do was stay alive long enough to get there and put out foot on the red planet on behalf of mankind. An eighteen month trip was a lesson in boredom. An earlier pensionable age would probably have played pea-knuckle or chequers. Us? Well, it was chess or unravelling the secrets of mathematics for some of us. For others, a spot of painting. At least with low gravity, there was no need for zimmer frames, just longer hauls in the gym. Anything to pass the time but compared to experience an old people’s home, bring it on.
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