It all happened so fast. I had won a trip to train with the astronauts at NASA. I hadn’t been there but 3 days when I was put into a real space suit, briefed and strapped into a shuttle. This was not so much a problem as it was a big mistake! I had insisted that I was not as skilled as they thought I was, but they had already come to know me by my jovial humor and thus took my escape attempts as a joke.

So, I had fudged my resume a little, I was now seeing why it was a bigger deal that I then thought it was. At the time I didn’t think that it would get me locked into the next space launch! Good thing there was a good crew! I thought trying to find the silver lining in the situation. Unfortunately, it looked as though the only lining I was to see on this trip was the lining of my suit that all of a sudden was making me feel a bit claustrophobic.

Well, at least my job didn’t start until we were in space. Although, now that I think about it. It may have been better if I had been given one that occurred before launch so they could realize that I really wasn’t joking when I had tried to keep them from putting on my space suit and when I had grabbed onto the shuttle door as they ushered me in. They were laughing the whole time and I guess I didn’t help that much by laughing too. I just didn’t know what to do. I was pretty darn nervous.

Half way through the countdown I was sweating bullets. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just from the suit and the ten thousand tons of rocket fuel starting to burn beneath us. I even closed my eyes for a time, hoping that it was all just a bad dream and that I would wake up pretty soon. I was jolted out of an anxiety coma when our team lead barked an order at me and got no response. “Cadet!” she called. Startled and bending protocol I managed to stammered back “what?!” as I roused myself back to reality.

I asked you to prepare to jettison the burners. We are almost ready to separate. She was right, I didn’t need much education to see that. The panel before us gave clear enough indication that we had just about spent all the fuel and would need to go off the central tank and drop the weight to proceed.

Well, when time came, I closed my eyes and pushed the most likely button to detach the rocket boosters. It was my lucky day. They came off and my lone job was complete. See, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be! Now that a weight had been lifted from my shoulders I finally had the presence of mind to ask what our mission was. Apparently I had not been paying attention back on Earth. This mission, it turns out, was to make a trip to the international space station and place the first space billboard that could be seen from earth through telescopes. I guess the defunding of the space program had really made NASA desperate for money.

The advertisement was purchased by a life insurance company and was to read, “You don’t have to go to space and back to pick affordable life insurance” and then the companies name. It was a big publicity stunt and they knew it would get quite the coverage and everybody would be looking to the sky like never before.

Well, you really don’t have to go to space to get some affordable life insurance, just fill out some information here on our site and let us help you get on your way to peace of mind and financial security for your family’s future.