Ground Control to Major Donald

There are moments in public life when satire simply gives up, packs a small bag, and leaves town without a forwarding address. This may be one of them.

In a recent reflection on his own capabilities, Donald Trump suggested that, had he chosen a different path, he would have had “no trouble” becoming an astronaut. The reasoning was characteristically elegant: astronauts must be smart, physically capable, and good at things – qualities, he assures us, he possesses in rare and possibly unprecedented quantities.

“To get there, you have to be very smart. You have to do a lot of things physically good. So, I would have no trouble making it. I’m physically very, very good.”

It is, on one level, a harmless boast. On another, it feels like a pilot program for a new approach to expertise.

Because while astronauts at NASA spend years acquiring advanced degrees, enduring punishing physical tests, and learning how not to accidentally destroy a spacecraft, the modern shortcut is refreshingly simple: skip all that, and go straight to being excellent.

Why spend a decade mastering orbital mechanics when you can simply wake up one morning with a strong sense that you’d be terrific at it?

Under this emerging model, astronaut selection becomes far more efficient. No need for simulations, flight hours, or psychological screening. A mirror will suffice.

“Are you very, very good?”
“Yes.”
“Welcome aboard.”

Training, too, can be streamlined. Day one: declare zero gravity “tremendous.” Day two: explain that oxygen systems would be improved, very strongly. Day three: suggest that space itself has been treated unfairly and could be doing a much better job.

There is, in this, something almost visionary. Not the claim itself, which dissolves on contact with reality, but the confidence that reality will adjust accordingly.

In an earlier era, the men who made the Apollo 11 Moon Landing possible were burdened by a different mindset. They trained relentlessly, deferred to expertise, and operated under the quaint assumption that the laws of physics were not open to negotiation. They did not describe themselves as “very, very good.” They demonstrated it, quietly, several hundred thousand kilometres from Earth.

Today, we are offered a more flexible arrangement.

And it is not confined to one man, or even one country. The same spirit occasionally drifts across Australian public life. We have seen complex portfolios reduced to slogans, difficult questions brushed aside with breezy assurance, and policies presented with a confidence that arrives well before the detail does. One could be forgiven for thinking that somewhere, just out of view, there is a quiet belief that governing itself is largely a matter of being “very, very good” at it.

No trouble at all.

It is a tempting philosophy. Expertise is slow. Evidence is tedious. But confidence? Confidence is immediate, and – best of all – self-certified.

And so we arrive at the curious possibility of an astronaut selected not for what he has done, but for how emphatically he believes he could have done it. It is not that the bar has been lowered. It is that the bar has been reclassified as optional.

To be fair, NASA is unlikely to abandon its training programs in favour of positive self-assessment anytime soon. Rockets remain stubbornly dependent on engineering, and orbit continues to resist personal branding. Gravity, despite repeated opportunities, has refused to make a deal.

But the appeal of the idea lingers. The notion that mastery can be replaced by assertion, that competence can be summoned through sheer force of self-belief – it has a certain modern elegance.

In that sense, the claim is less about space than it is about gravity. Not the physical kind, which is doing just fine, but the intellectual kind, which appears to be weakening.

Because once you accept that being “very, very good” is a sufficient credential, the possibilities expand dramatically. Surgeon. Engineer. Pilot. Astronaut. Cabinet minister. Why not all five?

No trouble at all.

Houston, we don’t have a problem.

We have a recruitment strategy.

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