It was an unusual "WANTED" Notice that caught my eye in some glossy journal that I was browsing on the well worn faux leather sofa in my local takeaway whilst awaiting on the preparation of my Chicken Jalfrezi and portion of chips.
It was by mere chance that I had selected that particular publication as the choice on offer was typically broad and tempting from National Geographic to Top Gear, 'Which' Consumer Guide on PC's and Classic Ford Monthly.
In fact it was not too much of a dilemna.
Being a thursday regular in the place meant that I had pretty much digested all of the waiting area literature and possessed, as a consequence, a laymans knowledge of the anxieties of the Cappuchtuk Indians in their homeland territories where besieged by off road mountain bikers, best value for money in the city car sector, how to switch on and off a desktop monitor and how to eke out a few more horsepower from a Mark 1 Escort using nothing more than a ladies pop sock and a potato.
The scientific themed magazine that caught my eye with a cover photo of a view back down to earth from the Stratosphere acheived by a man from Leeds with a meteorological balloon and some gadgets from Maplins was a new addition to the Jolsha reference library.
Quietly rustling through the pages I saw that other features were on sustainable subterranean living in your own back garden, fuelling a motor car from used deep fat fryer oil, where to site a wind turbine without decapitating local children and growing cash crops on the vast acres of greenspace amongst some of the largest traffic islands in our national motorway network.
It was, I speculated, a fairly niche-appeal magazine. The smallprint next to the Editorial did not have any mention of circulation figures, perhaps too small to mention without embarassment.
The article capturing my attention related to a planned spaceflight for 2018.
It seems that everyone now is planning a spaceflight from Branson to Lynx Deodorant although with my laymans understanding these were just rich tourist forays into the upper atmosphere. The balloon man from Leeds was already there in his own way.
This scheduled endeavour was a proper pioneering effort.
The terminology was a manned "Flyby" of the planet Mars.
I could do nothing but read on, hoping that my Indian Takeaway was well down the cooking order in the flame reddened and fragrant back kitchen just a few yards away.
Mars!
An intriguing proposition. The most interesting in my mind of the planets in our solar system.
I was brought up to both fantasise about and fear the Red Planet in regular alternation. The family stereo blasted out Holsts Bringer of War on a regular basis and we could legitimately run around the through lounge and jump on the settee in joyous rapture (Aged 6). The broadcasting of 'War of the Worlds' on our black and white TV had the opposite effect as we cowered behind the same piece of battered but bulky furniture.
I was as a geeky teenager fascinated by the pictures of Mars from orbiting probes and much later by the actual landing on the surface by the Rover vehicle. Ray Bradbury's Chronicles of Mars remain amongst my favourite sci-fi works.
A "flyby" did at first sound a bit of a compromise. A bit of a fake spacetrip. A look-e-likey experience as is the trend in modern lives if you have no prospect of the real and authentic thing.
Nevertheless the plan was startlingly ambitious and especially as nothing was really yet in place in terms of infrastructure, and, oh yes, a spaceship.
It was the all encompassing obsession of some zillionaire guy but a bit of hype and column inches could do no harm in generating further interest and investors to ease the cash drain of the venture.
The idea of a manned flight to Mars was broached by Wernher von Braun in the early years of the space race in the late 50's and early 60's. It may have seemed a huge step up, even then, from the Moon landings , in themselves a pinnacle acheivement for humankind but the next logical progression.
The scale of the new "Mission to, but not touching down on, Mars" was difficult to comprehend but centred on dual aspects of the mode of transport and the resilience of the crew.
Rockets is rockets is rockets as far as I am concerned. They go up in a bang, light up the sky a lot and then cruise about in the endless cold silence of space before coming down on a parachute (Source; Look and Learn 1969).
The technology already exists for delivery but the potential weak spot in the whole operation would be the personnel.
An indicated round trip of 501 days in a cramped capsule in a hostile environment of nothingness would be a challenge never before faced by our species.
The article had a profile of the perfect crew for such a challenge. I was expecting, at minimum, an All-American duo of former Navy Seals or other square headed military types, but no.
The appeal was out for a middle aged couple, ideally husband and wife to front the expedition.
I would put forward myself and my better half for such an extended working type vacation with the following credentials.
We mostly get on together.
We like a different experience, for example we stayed 'off resort' once in Corfu and managed to fend for ourselves although the pool pump was a bit dodgy.
We could do with a bit of a change in direction, up and out to Mars being as much of a change as possible in our minds.
We both have driving licences and my three points should be expunged by now (thank you- not, Strathclyde Police and Procurator Fiscal).
We were both brought up on Vesta Curries and other dried and dehydrated foods and know how to stock and manage a deep freeze.
Caravanning does not seem too claustrophobic and so confinement in a capsule would be tolerable.
Wearing just one set of underwear for a year and a half suits me but may be a sticking point for the wife.
I am sure that we could handle the monotony of the interstellar travel. We have always had a long list of novels and autobiographies that we have been meaning to read but have been thwarted on annual holidays by baggage restrictions. I expect that the payload of a rocket is capable of taking a few hundred paperbacks.
The final stipulation, on which we would insist, would be a Travel Scrabble set specifically designed so that the tiles would not float about in the cabin.
Imagine losing a key piece into the electrical equipment on which a pivotal game in the 501 day series could depend.
nb.I attach a stamped self addressed envelope in anticipation of receiving an application form.
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