Some Dads Take Their Kids to Disney. I Took My Son to Space.

WHEN I WAS in third grade, I watched a movie called Space Camp. The plot involves a group of kids at (you guessed it) space camp who accidentally get shot into space and have to figure out how to steer their space shuttle back to Earth.

Even though its logic doesn’t hold up, Space Camp unlocked something in my brain. The movie was my first real introduction to aviation and space—and I became fascinated by flying.

I don’t remember all the details, but I know that at some point the following summer, a brochure for a real space camp, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, entered the house. I begged my mom, every day, for two weeks straight, just to open it. Just to look at it.

Finally, she cracked and told me that she didn’t have to look at the brochure to know that we couldn’t afford it. Up until that point, I figured that we were middle-class and doing okay. I didn’t know that we were hanging on by a thread. So I never asked her again. The message I heard was: This frivolous shit, like pretending to be an astronaut, is not going to fly on our budget. I buried my fascination. Wanting to become a firefighter became my thing.

Then, about 30 years later, I became a dad. As you probably know, when you’re a father you have to entertain your kids somehow. So began a regular diet of trips to history, science, and aerospace museums. We went to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center twice. There my son saw a flyer for space camp in Florida—and he asked me if he could go.

I did the math, and I was like, “Yeah, you can. Not only that, I’m gonna go with you.” You know that Space Camp-watching kid from 1986 was fucking thrilled, bro. Thrilled.

I was way too big for the beds in the dorm, but I didn’t care. My son and I sat side by side in a shuttle simulator, pilot and copilot. We tested our intestinal fortitude on a gravity chair and a multi-axis trainer, just like astronauts do. We built and launched our own model rocket. And we spent a week, eating three meals a day, together.

As a parent, you should be able to give your kids a better life than you have—but to experience it in real time is pretty cool. We applied this year for the Kennedy Space Center camp in Florida. (Yes, there’s an application process, and it’s very competitive.) Fingers crossed for 2026.

I’m hoping that my son will still want to go, even if he moves on to something else, as kids do. (Engineering? Soccer? Firefighting?) Going to space camp with him once filled in a blank from my childhood while satisfying a wish he had.

And we both agree: It was so much better than the movie.