Astro Nice Time: Kid Gives His Piggy Bank To NASA, Gets Call From Real Space Man For Reals

We always feel a little guilty when we dress up a "not as horrible as it coulda been" story as a Nice Time story, and this has been a week where too many stories needed Remedial Kittens, so it is with some pleasure that we bring you this almost-unblemished story of Pure Nice: Connor Johnson, this niftadorable 6-year-old from Denver, has been nuts about the idea of going to space since he was three -- the astronaut jammies, LEGO space shuttles, the usual stuff. SPACE! But then he recently learned that instead of expanding space exploration, the U.S.A. is talking about budget cuts and just not bothering. Connor decided that this state of affairs simply would not do, so he started an online petition to save NASA and sent the beleaguered agency his life's savings of $10.41. This got Media Attention.

And so on Wednesday, Connor Johnson got a phone call from retired astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. (Pardon us; there seems to be some lunar dust in our eye here...) But that's not all: just to add a little booster rocket of "awwwwww," Cernan called Connor on "the exact day that I stepped on the moon many, many years ago" (that would be 41 years ago).

Yes, we know, many of you have grown accustomed to avoiding the videos, since they so often include horrible things like Pat Robertson or the nasal vocalizations of Ted Cruz. But watch this sucker. Was the call from Cernan a blatant bit of publicity-seeking? You bet your ass it was, and it's pure Nerdgasm / Sensawonder stuff, too. There's nothing wrong with getting a bit misty-eyed about this stuff, and imagine what a damned shame it would be if the country that went to the freakin' MOON just kept cutting back and saying, nahh, dreams of space are nice, but we can't afford that. Not with all these tax cuts we need to keep the 1% living here. Screw that. All due respect to the late Mr. Scott-Heron, and we do love the song, but Yr Wonkette still wants Connor Johnson to go to Mars.

[ Atlantic / Whitehouse.gov ]