Madsen Pirie

Haha!  This has to be one of the coolest “situations vacant” ads that has ever appeared.  SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company, the one that sent its Dragon capsule up to the International Space Station, has published a “positions open” list. Applicants are promised the opportunity to advance the course of human history, and get paid for doing so into the bargain.

First off they want a space suit design engineer to help kit out their future astronauts with wearable life support systems.  Then they want a “sniffer” to smell stuff before it gets incorporated into missions.  When you’re stuck in a tin can for several months on the way to Mars, you don’t really want unpleasant odours hanging around.  They want space psychologists, too, to help crews deal with each other in the confinement of long voyages.  Further into the future, perhaps, they want to recruit space tour guides to help fare-paying passengers enjoy and understand what they are experiencing.  Finally, and obviously, they want to recruit astronauts, the guys and gals who will actually fly their hardware to Mars and beyond.  OK. So this is partly a PR device, but it’s also the stuff that dreams are made on.  Youngsters across the planet will drool over this and imagine themselves stepping into the vacant shoes advertised.  And quite right, too.  It’s people who dream that change the world, and soon perhaps other worlds, too.

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