A mom and dad are being recruited to take a free sight-seeing trip around Mars.

The world’s first space tourist, Dennis Tito, is looking for volunteers for a 501-day free space adventure. With accommodations yet to be designed, the Earth couple will take off on January 5, 2018 for a 228-day half-arc fling around the sun. On August 21, 2018 they will wave and take pictures as they pass the Red Planet on the left.

“Oh, Margie,” the husband will gasp, “I never thought we’d be this close.” “Franklin Delanore,” the wife replies with an affectionate hug, “I always knew you’d take me places.” They kiss, jump up and down, and shout with glee, “The neighbors will never beat this one.”

With luck, John Carter of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s fame, with Dejah Thoris, a Princess of Mars, at his side, will look up and spy Margie and Franklin Delanore flying through the skies and wave back from atop their eight-legged greater thoats, to the delight of our space adventurers with their faces pressed to the glass of the single porthole of their passing spaceship.

“Wow, Margie, that was an exciting flyby. Did you see John and Dejah down there? They did look good. Now, it’s just 273 days to get back home. I can’t wait until we are within range of decent cell phone tower so we can see what the pictures look like.”

Mr. Tito says he is sponsoring the trip to Mars just for the fun of it. Dennis started his engineering career at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration – known affectionately as NASA – made a bundle in investments, and paid the Russian Federal Space Agency $20,000,000.00 in 2001 to hop on a Soyuz space capsule for an eight-day stay on the International Space Station. Apparently that was great fun.

Off we go into the wild blue yonder
Climbing high into the sun

Minds of men fashioned a crate of thunder
Sent it high into the blue

Here’s a toast to the host
Of those who love the vastness of the sky

Off we go into the wild sky yonder
Keep the wings level and true

As a Sputnik kid, I grew up with the rhythm of that U.S. Air Force song echoing in my head, satellites being launched and men landing on the moon.

Those were exciting times.

They still are.

I wish the young couple well who find the golden ticket and win the free trip into the wild blue yonder in a crate of thunder to view the true vastness out there in the wild sky yonder.

The brochure says the sky is only blue until you break free of our planet and enter the black bright vastness of space, flying off in search of the red planet, a mysterious and enchanted domain found in the remembered words of ancient lore, spied by wanders in late-night dreams and inhabiting the pages of stories not written and yet to be told.

I know. It’s only one couple that will be selected for the trip. But, that’s this trip and this time.

The Dutch Company Mars One hopes to place people on the surface of the Red Planet in 2023 and establish a long-term colony soon thereafter. NASA is working on new habitation capsules and big-push rockets to race its own colonists to Barsoom, the land of John Carter, by the mid-2030’s.

As the erstwhile space explorer Alexander Pope once wrote while gazing into the night sky:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never Is, but always To be blest:

The soul, uneasy and confin’d from home,

Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

One of the nice things about planets is that they have been around for a long time and are expected to be around for a long time to come.

So, don’t give up.

Get those applications in.

Search and find those golden tickets.

Your trip to the skies is there and waiting for you.

And then off you go into the wild blue yonder and the black brightness of space.

These are fun and exciting times for one and all.

Couples and singles will find a way.

To what awaits them all.

Keep dreaming,

Grandpa Jim