Here’s an idea I can get behind:
Feel free to nominate me. If chosen, I would totally go.
Actually, the idea is not new. As one of my nanotech friends explained:
There is some cultural precedent on “sending a poet into space.” In the landmark movie “Contact” (story by Carl Sagan, 1997), the plot is Earth’s first knowledge of the existence of other intelligent beings in the universe and how to respond. Ultimately, Earth sends a physicist played by Jodie Foster into the wormhole that flings her through the Universe to the star Vega where she is to have a meeting. During the travel, she sees the beauty of the universe, and the writers just make her repeatedly mumble, the obvious, “that it is so beautiful…” The repeated statements are followed by her line, “they should have sent a poet.” I have always felt that the writers got it right.