So You Want to Be an AstronautPart I: The ApplicationThere is an application just to get an application. I had to fill out what NASA calls an interest request form, which is an information sheet very similar to the type of sheet you fill out and send in for a magazine subscription. I got my card at the Johnson Space Center in Houston last summer. The space center is a sixteen hundred acre complex filled with lush grass and cream-colored buildings of different shapes and sizes. Satellite dishes bloom like flowers throughout the complex, and the only buildings open to the public are a museum, the missile park, and the mission control center. After walking through a model of the Space Shuttle, pretending to be Sally Ride, I passed an information kiosk and the Request for Interest form caught my eye. I took one and put it in the Space Center museum guide, forgetting about it until months later, when I filled it out and mailed it. Just a few weeks ago my question came. It's a twenty-five page article with a shimmering blue and silver cover that has an image of the Space Shuttle on it. I removed the cover and stuck it on my bulletin board next to a postcard of Charles Lindbergh standing in front of The Spirit of St. Louis. Twenty-five pages. Becoming an astronaut is more difficult than enrolling in Harvard Medical School. Harder than paying taxes. Probably even more difficult than running for Senate. Now, I can't be an astronaut because I have absolutely no interest in math, science, engineering, medicine, or astrophysics. I dabble in astronomy, but they don't send you on the Space Shuttle because you think it would be nice. However, it is important to always have an impossible dream. It keeps you humble. This is my impossible dream. So I read the whole question. Why do you want to become an astronaut? I love the audacity of the space program. Here we are, little animals trying to jump off our planet. How have your past accomplishments or experiences prepared you to become an astronaut? When I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, I tried on a space helmet. It fit. Boots were another story, but I can wear many layers of socks.