I would totally go on a really long space mission. You know, given the chance, like if they needed volunteers, “Calling all Americans! We’re looking for one patriotic spacefarer to help NASA explore the cosmos!” they’d obviously be making cold-calls because the mission would be too intense, even for trained astronauts. I’m not talking dangerous. Just long. A very time-consuming, extended mission.

But seriously, I’d definitely be up for it. Put me on that spaceship and let’s blastoff. I don’t care about Gravity. Do you think I’m that easily scared off by a George Clooney movie? And it’s not even a George Clooney movie, it’s a Sandra Bullock movie, but I didn’t want to come across as sexist, implying that the most non-scary element of that movie was the lead, Ms. Bullock.

But I’m not scared. Remember that scene where a piece of space debris ripped a hole right through that guy’s head? Come on, that didn’t look that realistic. Start fitting me for a spacesuit already. Can mine be blue? Like midnight. Like space blue. Even though space is black. But like a spacey navy blue, with yellow stripes around the wrists, and a golden-tinted spacesuit helmet.

What’s the hesitation in sending a crew of astronauts to an asteroid, to Mars? What are all of the professional astronauts scared of, cosmic radiation? Space madness? What else could astronauts be worried about? Claustrophobia? A debilitating loss in muscle and bone mass? Actually, that’s probably be the one thing that really creeps me out, that of my own body slowly disappearing right before my eyes, just because I don’t have any gravity to keep everything fresh.

But whatever, I’ll still do it. I’ll just clench my muscles, all of them, constantly. That’s got to be good for something right? And I’ll just make sure to do plenty of space jumping jacks. Even without gravity, that’s still got to be pretty tough, extending your arms and your legs out, it’s got to get tiring eventually. I think I just solved the whole no gravity problem. Someone should get a message to any astronauts currently in space: do some space jumping jacks, like a thousand of them.

Or even better, they could get some sort of a mechanical suit that does the space jumping jacks for them, so they could put it on while they’re asleep. Even better than that, you could just heavily sedate anybody in space and then program that same space jumping jack mechanical suit to do all sorts of crazy exercises, space pull ups, space Insanity.

Or even much, much better, let’s just sedate all of the astronauts, the whole time that they’re in space. Wait, no, while that would work for really long voyages, the idea has already been explored in pretty much every space movie, like Alien, like Event Horizon. By the way, if you’re wondering what I was talking about earlier with space madness, watch Event Horizon, that movie was scary as hell.

Man, I actually think I took this thought experiment a little too far, I’m pretty scared now, not of space, I think I’d still be down for some space, but of Event Horizon, I’m telling you, that movie is terrifying. It’s like, while they’re all asleep, the spaceship passes through some dimensional portal to hell, but you don’t know it, because they’re still in the hell dimension, or something came back with them, and then the captain pulls his eyes out.

Jesus, some things cannot be unseen. I was like twelve years old when I saw that movie, I was alone in my bedroom, it started playing on a movie channel late at night. I was like, oh boy, I love sci-fi, I love Star Trek, this movie should be great. And here I am, a grown man, sitting here writing about how he’d be a great pick for an extended space mission, and I can’t even get through the whole thing because I’m still a little scared, every night before I go to bed I pull the covers up really tight, all the way to my neck, I try not to think about Event Horizon, but I’m telling you, if you haven’t seen the movie, watch the movie, and then you’ll know about the panic that I’m grappling with on a daily basis.

But regular space, come on, this isn’t sci-fi, it’s real life. And I can’t think of a better candidate to be a real life civilian astronaut. So NASA, if you’re reading this, and if you’ve been contemplating a civilian astronaut campaign, but you’re not sure about how you’d get it started, don’t bother. Just pick me. I’m your guy. Let’s go to space.