The space station would be circling the earth at a height of 200 miles up. This was a new concept thought up by the existing Government and the scientific boffins department that was remotely attached to NASA. The year was 2020.
Nothing had been going on in space since the tragedy in America and England’s initiative of sending a craft into space with just two occupants was daring in some ways because of the specialised adaptation of controls and of course the training which had to be secret from the outside world was taking a considerably longer time for the lucky two to overcome. It was imperative that the two occupants thoroughly learnt even the basic controls to survive the journey. To access the massive store of food and liquid refreshments and in some cases the weightlessness within the station was going to be difficult to keep under control. Toilet facilities were going to be the most difficult to understand.
There would be no pressurised space suits to contend with as there would be no outside walks to be made. The two had to endure long hours in a dark room to simulate how black the sky would be all the time in their new environment over a period of two weeks.
The Government were keeping the occupants of their new space station well under wraps; nothing in the daily papers was reported, except that one paper hazarded a guess that monkeys were going up into space.
The space station was already up there just waiting for the occupants to arrive which was scheduled as soon as the strenuous training had been achieved.
At last the great day arrived and the two occupants were carried in an unmarked vehicle to the launching site. With all the preliminaries all complete, the count down proceeded. The launch would be activated from the launch site office. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ignition, blast off! Slowly and deceptively the space shuttle rose and then as if getting a helping hand from behind it became faster and disappeared through the clouds. No one knew how long it would take the spacecraft to reach its destination or how well the docking procedure would work. The overall training had taken just over two years to complete and the docking was the last project that these two had to master.
The shushing silence was at last broken when an inaudible sound came from one of the occupants and it was assumed that they had reached their destination and the docking procedure had been successful.
Josie and Tessa were pleased with their achievements and seeing the long corridor in front of them as the compartment door slid silently open, they began to run towards the Command Module and as they approached the door it opened automatically. Looking at all the controls in that part of the ship didn’t interest them at all. They were searching for the food and water to sustain themselves for the time ahead. They found the button that they needed to press and sure enough food and water came aplenty. They felt they needed their rest and climbed into their respective beds. The space station moved at a different angle and they were floating, but it didn’t seem to trouble them at all.
Down on earth at launching site office, one boffin turned to another boffin and said ‘It took me blooming ages to teach those cats to go through the cat door and now they have made history by being the first operational cats in space.
