EMMA PATTERSON
Staff Lampoonist
The astronauts on the International Space Station know better than anyone what it means to be scared: suspended hundreds of feet off of the Earth’s surface for months at a time. The crew’s official mission is to conduct research and finish construction on the ISS, all the while keeping an eye out for any suspicious UFOs, non-human beings and ice-age-inducing asteroids. When the Lampoon interviewed a few crew members about life in space, however, we were shocked to hear what they consider to be the scariest part of their job.
“I’d say I spend 90 percent of my time staring down at Earth and thinking, ‘What the hell is going on?’” crew member Bill Jenkins said. He, along with two other American crew members, admit that, constant worry of food shortage and alien attack aside, life on the ISS is definitely preferable to life on Earth.
“Well, you-know-who isn’t here, for one thing,” Jenkins said, offering us a value-sized bag of Space Cheetos. His crew member, Barbara Smith agreed, saying “I can walk around the space station without being grabbed or leered at. Do I worry about getting sucked into space and disintegrating into matter? Sure. But at least I can walk around freely.”
Knowing that their time on the ISS is coming to an end, we asked the crew what their plans are once they get back to Earth.
“Uh, about that,” Jenkins said, scratching his head awkwardly. “You see, we’re just gonna chill here a while longer,” he said, his body contorted into a fetal position in order to fit in one room of the ISS. “Just look at us. We’re calm. And we can’t even poop without the whole crew knowing about it.”
“You can see things from a different perspective up here,” one crew member, Jack Peterson, said. “On Earth, I worried about, like, political corruption, nuclear war, environmental meltdowns, that sort of stuff. Now, it’s stuff like brain-eating aliens, running out of toilet paper, remembering the fact that we’re suspended in the air hundreds of miles off the ground. I mean, come on. Which would you choose?”
The astronauts wanting to stay in space says a lot, considering their recent run-in with mysterious alien creatures.
“The aliens are cool,” Jenkins said nonchalantly. “I mean, yeah, they tried to inject us with this weird blue liquid, and yeah, we were forced into indentured servitude for the next millennium, but hey, at least they kept us safe from that giant cloud demon that enveloped us a while back. I only lost three toes that day.” He tried to show us his foot, but we declined.
“You see, we have everything we need here,” Smith asserted, showing us their food rations for the next month. “We have powdered milk, plastic sandwiches and a lifetime supply of toothpaste; what else do we need? We gucci. Seriously.”
The crew was adamant in their decision to remain on the ISS until everyone on Earth calmed the hell down.
“We face near-certain death up here everyday, and I’d still rather be here than live in a world where some people still use the wrong ‘your,’” Jenkins said shrugging. “Besides, who else is going to warn you guys when the Martians inevitably arrive? They know you guys are struggling. It’s only a matter of time.”