Oxygen Has to Come From Somewhere…

I was looking at some trees today. Not how I usually spend my day, but I went to the park to see if I could find a shady spot in the hot weather. That of course got me thinking about trees, and how many there are, and just how much oxygen we have here on Earth. Seriously, that stuff is everywhere. We have so much oxygen in supply that we actually have places that offer oxygen therapy in Melbourne. That is, you can go along and receive various medical benefits from being in a hyperbaric chamber. I have quite a bit of experience in dealing with that sort of thing, of course, given that oxygen was of great importance on the space station. In fact, I was official in charge of oxygen distribution, a job that required me to constantly be on duty. One tiny slip up and we were all dead, so obviously I was never really ‘off’ duty.

I know all about oxygen, and why it’s important. You could sort of say it was an occupational hazard of ultimate importance, which is why I feel pretty confident discussing it. Maybe even administering it for medicinal and recovery purposes, if it ever took my fancy. I’m not saying I could be a qualified purveyor of hyperbaric medicine, but…I could be. If I wanted to. See, that’s the great thing about working in space: all the transferable skills. You have to be able to multitask, and also be a master of a number of different disciplines. I didn’t just learn how to press space buttons; I was earning several degrees at the same time, just by existing and completing the daily routine. And one of my many skills is oxygen management. If I didn’t do it perfectly, every single day, then we wouldn’t have lasted long.

Let’s put that down as a B-career, if I ever get round to looking into it. Portable hyperbaric chambers in Melbourne are quite the up and coming business, so I’ve heard. Maybe they need people as skilled as I.

-Apollo