My next holiday

Nils Ling

Last spring, a Soyuz spacecraft blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. (That’s sort of the Russian equivalent of Cape Canaveral). The rocket carried a replacement crew for the International Space Station, including a flight engineer and a commander.

Also on board: a tourist.

Charles Simonyi is a billionaire. He’s a software engineer and a former executive of Microsoft. He went on holiday. In space.

At a time when some of us are taking back pop bottles to pay the mortgage, when workers are getting laid off left and right, and when bank executives are having to knock millions off their bonus checks, this guy shelled out35 million dollarsfor a two week vacation in orbit.

It sounds like the holiday of a lifetime, and I’m looking into it for my next vacation. But I do have a few questions I want to ask my travel agent.

First: I wonder if the $35 million is “all-inclusive”. You’d think so. But wouldn’t it be annoying to get up there, ask one of the astronauts for a glass of Tang, and have to dig out your wallet? And given the overspending on the space program, you just know it will be like $6 a bottle.

And that’s another thing: the astronauts. I’m sure they’re well trained and all, but most of their training has to do with getting there and back, and conducting experiments to see what happens to money when it is exposed to space programs (answer: it evaporates). With all due respect, that kind of training isn’t going to get me a good Mai Tai when happy hour starts.

I wonder if $35 million gets you a decent view? Wouldn’t it be a bit of a letdown to get on board and get shown to your room (or hammock, or whatever they use) and look out your portal and see ... stars? I can see all the stars I want, just by walking out into my back yard. For $35 million, I want to be able to get out the binoculars or telescope and say “Ohh, look! I can see my house!”

I’m going to ask my travel agent about the food. For that kind of money, you’d think it would be pretty special. Now, of course I’m not expecting a Luau Night – they probably wouldn’t have enough sand on board to bury a pig in a pit filled with hot coals. But would it be too much to ask for a decent breakfast buffet?

Probably.

That’s the thing about a vacation in space. It sounds good, but there would be real drawbacks.

For one thing, I’m a Canadian. When I’m looking for vacation, I want to take it in the winter and go someplace warm. If I remember my Grade Eight science books correctly, the deepest reaches of space are almost as cold as Winnipeg in February.

And sure, you’d probably get some good pictures, but when you get back from a cruise, people are always asking what you did.

–Did you go on any excursions?”

“Well, they let me walk outside, tethered to the space station. Other than that, I mostly floated around and looked out the window.”

“Oh. Well – was there any entertainment? When Bob and I went on the cruise in Florida, they had a big dance band and a Broadway show and a magician and ...”

“We had two guys. They just floated there, looking down at Earth, and sang that song from the Discovery Channel ad. You know, the “Boom-de-yadda” song.”

“Well ... it’s a nice song ... “

“Yeah, but over and over and over? And they only sang the first two lines. You know how in the ad, they say “It just doesn’t get old, does it?” Well, let me tell you: it gets old.”

“Did they have a swim-up bar in the pool? When George and I went to that all-inclusive in Cuba, there was a swim-up bar right outside our room!”

“No bar. No pool. No room.”

“Still. Nice pictures.”

I guess this Simonyi fellow enjoyed his trip. This was his second time on the space station. The first time he went, in 2007, it cost him $25 million. This time, it was $10 million more. I feel his pain. we've all been hit by inflation.

So I’ve started saving. I’m putting $20 a week into a jar in my sock drawer. It doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up pretty quickly. I should have enough saved by ... well, I’m not good with math. Probably a couple of years or so.

I haven’t told my wife yet. I’m going to surprise her. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled. She’s been a big supporter of my interest in space travel.

She’s always saying, “If they can put a man on the moon, why, oh why, can’t it be YOU?”

This feature: From Nils Ling’s book Truths and Half Truths. A collection of some of his most memorable and hilarious columns.