PRESENT TENSE:YOU MIGHTN'T feel it yet, but a great moment in Irish history is close. When Richard Branson this week unveiled Virgin Galactic's "mothership" which will carry its commercial spacecraft to the edge of the atmosphere, he claimed that it would be ferrying tourists into space within 18 months, writes Shane Hegarty
Which means that around 2010 we might wander outside, gaze up at the sky and know that somewhere among the stars is Ireland's first astronaut. And what heroic adventurer will represent us in this glorious excursion? It's likely to be one of a pair of bickering businessmen, either a car salesman or a "psychic" chatline operator. So, on that historic day the shiver that runs through us may have nothing to do with the chill in the air.
What is phonelines entrepreneur Tom Higgins's incredible story? "When I saw Branson's announcement on Sky TV in September 2004 calling for individuals to sign up and become passengers, I went to the website and registered to be the first Irishman into space."
Went to the website and registered. It would be easy to mock, but he will have faced a serious mental challenge when deciding if he wanted to receive future promotional information from Virgin Galactic or certain carefully selected companies.
Went to the website and registered. How different would the history of spaceflight be if the first man on the moon got there because he happened to be first to tick a box at the moment it was announced that Nasa was looking for someone with the right stuff - that stuff being fat bundles of green paper.
Higgins has previously told Irish Entrepreneur magazine that, "My trip is being sponsored by my company, Irish Psychics Live. The company will cash in on it, in that they will use it to recoup the $200,000 that has been invested. Everything has to be exploited, everything has a commercial reality behind it."
Ah, such noble sentiments. How much better JFK's speech would have been if it had only been tweaked in such a fashion. "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because everything has a commercial reality behind it . . . "
What of car salesman and streetkid-turned-good Bill Cullen? Having heard him tell his story so many times, you might think that he could simply launch himself into space by pulling particularly hard on his bootstraps.
In fact, his route to the majesty of space began when he phoned Virgin Galactic's Head of Astronaut Relations. But the speed with which he signed that $200,000 was frighteningly quick. Don't you doubt it: years of writing cheques, signing cheques, receiving cheques paid off in that one moment.
Since then, each man has gone through a rigorous programme of self-promotion. They have wrapped their mouths around the tube of self-aggrandisement and blown with all their might. They appear regularly in print and radio, bragging about which one of them actually holds a place at the head of the queue.
Cullen has had himself snapped while wearing a jacket with an Irish flag and some space patches.
Higgins went one better by posing in an orange space suit while he holds a helmet under his arm. He looks ridiculous, as if he's stuck his head through a cardboard cut-out at the Kennedy Space Centre's kids' zone and paid $5 for a souvenir print.
Is this how our nation will be represented when the world's media mobs the tarmac and films the first passengers? Will they catch sight of a couple of Irish businessmen, elbows splayed, speedwalking up the steps? Will competitive nudges turn to all out shoving and pulling as each tries to squeeze through the door first?
Actually, there is a third Irish man in the mix. Galway businessman PJ King also signed up to be among the first 100 passengers, but has since gone about his business in a quieter manner, knowing that the launch order may be decided by lottery.
However, the Guardian has described him as a "boisterous Irishman with a loud shirt and an incipient paunch". If we are going to send an everyman into space, he sounds about right.
Admittedly, the pioneering astronauts and cosmonauts of the space race were not representative of their wider populations, but men such as Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong represented a heroic, and stoic, ideal that has held up throughout the years. They were war veterans and test pilots; daredevils who had survived punishing selection processes knowing that they were often considered less valuable than the craft they flew in.
The democratisation of space will be a wonderful thing, of course. People who have dreamed of being astronauts will achieve that ambition for the price of a family car. Young and old will go where quite a few people have gone before.
But when it comes to the final frontier, we have a right to be precious about who our first cosmic ambassador will be.
Arguably the likes of Cullen and Higgins represent Ireland better than any Air Force daredevil.
These are ordinary men who have succeeded through graft and entrepreneurial zeal.
But if they didn't go on about it so much, if they didn't squabble incessantly over the airwaves, if they didn't dress up like Mr Benn in his space adventure episode, then maybe they wouldn't have so quickly relinquished their status as the Men The Irish Would Most Like To Send Into Space And Actually Come Back Again.
shegarty@irish-times.ie