Every few years, NASA opens its astronaut applications to the general public, which means that for a brief window, any private citizen with a dream and a keyboard can throw their hat in the ring. Most people who aren’t qualified simply don’t apply. Comedian and writer Alex Falcone took a more committed approach: He applied anyway, then wrote his own rejection letter in NASA’s voice, eviscerating the application he’d just submitted. To be clear up front, because the joke only works if you know this, the letter is not real, and Falcone has never pretended otherwise. He wrote both halves—the absurd application and the withering institutional reply—as a bit and published the whole thing on his Medium blog, The Weekly Weep. As he later told Bored Panda, the rejection isn’t genuine. He wrote it himself. The comedy is a man conducting a one-sided argument with the space agency and losing badly. Michael gets declined by NASA byu/bigshortsfeet infunny Falcone’s self-assessment sets the tone. He described himself as someone with no useful skills who is hard to get along with on long trips, having, by his own account, ruined multiple road trips and book clubs, and who gets motion sick easily. In other words, a man who understood the assignment of “reasons not to send this person into space” and met it thoroughly. The fictional NASA’s replies are where the piece lives. When his application apparently offered that he’d seen Masters of the Universe and felt that should count toward the required master’s degree, the letter is unmoved. When he listed enjoying the part of Apollo 13 where the crew improvises an air filter and noted he likes space Legos almost as much as pirate Legos, the agency responds with the only sensible verdict: “Perhaps you can apply to be a pirate.” His dig at the other “nerds” applying is met with the gentle reminder that the application exists to explain why they should hire him and also that the people reading it are, themselves, those nerds. It keeps escalating. The letter declines his request for “no meetings before noon.” It confirms, with strained patience, that astronauts do not get a “plus one” to the moon; that yes, he would have to tell his wife if he were going to the moon; and that it is sorry to hear she “is a worrier.” It assures him there is, in fact, only one moon. And it notes, in what may be the single best line, that since astronaut ice cream was “90% of the reason” he was applying, he might be satisfied to learn it’s available in the gift shop and online. If I ever were to apply to NASA, this is the rejection letter I would get. byu/RyanTellsaStory infunny The bit landed well beyond Falcone’s usual audience, getting picked up by humor sites and, as he noted with some delight, discussed on Australian radio. Part of why it works is that Falcone is a veteran of rejection in a way few people are. As he told Bored Panda, years of getting turned down by comedy festivals and writing gigs gave him a thick enough skin to find the form funny rather than painful. He used to comfort himself with the fact that Michael Jordan didn’t make his high school basketball team until he watched the documentary and realized Jordan responded by growing several inches and working relentlessly, which, Falcone admits, he is not doing. The full letter is worth reading in its entirety, and that’s genuinely the best way to enjoy it, not in summary. It’s a tight piece of comic writing that understands a truth most motivational posters get backward. Sometimes the dream is more fun as a joke than it would ever be as a job, and the rejection, when you write it yourself, can be the best part. The post A comedian applied to be a NASA astronaut, then wrote himself the rejection letter he deserved appeared first on Upworthy.