Trip to outer space beats dream of flying

AS a child, he dreamt of flying in the sky as a commercial airline pilot. Next year, Chino Roque will be taking his ambition further and farther—into space.

The 23-year-old psychology graduate of De La Salle University has earned his ticket to space as one of 22 people from around the world who will take off on a pioneer suborbital flight to be launched by the Axe Apollo Space Academy, a global contest sponsored by the popular men’s deodorant.

“I had a dream of becoming a pilot as a child, but going into space always seemed like a long shot because we don’t have a space program in the Philippines,” said Roque in a phone interview from the United States.

Roque, a Crossfit coach from Las Piñas City, beat two other Filipino candidates after a series of grueling physical and mental challenges at the space camp to take the lone Philippine slot on the space mission.

More than 100 candidates from 60 countries took part in the camp, vying for the 22 slots on the flight which will launch the winners 100 kilometers into the atmosphere at the point where outer space begins.

They will be flown in the two-seater XCOR Lynx Mark II spacecraft one at a time together with a pilot in mid-2014.

Roque said the astronaut hopefuls had to go through a number of “hero missions” at the Florida camp, including simulated air combat on a fighter jet and the nausea-inducing “G-force” challenge, in which they were strapped to a cylinder at four times the pull of gravity.

“There was no challenge that was easy. All the hero missions were equally difficult,” he said.

The candidates were judged on their bravery, enthusiasm and teamwork, he said.

Never-say-die attitude

Roque said he felt it was his leadership and never-say-die attitude that gave him the edge over the others. “I just kept trying to rally and to encourage my teammates,” he said.

He dedicated his victory to his friends and family, as well as the two other Philippine representatives: Evan Rey Datuin, 24, a hotel and restaurant management graduate, and Ramil Montalvo Santos, 29, a freelance graphic artist.

“I understand how disappointed they were at not being chosen, but I’ll try my best to make them proud,” he said.

Roque was not even originally part of the Philippine team. He was a last-minute replacement for Philippine Air Force pilot Mario Mendoza Jr., who gave up his slot for military duty.

The Philippine contest began with an online voting, which attracted 28,020 hopefuls, the fourth biggest number of national contestants in the world, Axe Philippines brand manager Gem Laforteza said in an earlier interview with the Inquirer.

Of that number, 4,085 were short-listed to take an IQ test, and only 400 passed to qualify for the military-style obstacle race at Bonifacio Global City last August.

“It will take four minutes to go into space and then about 20 minutes for reentry,” Roque said. The passengers will experience microgravity, or weightlessness, for a few minutes.

Not exactly the stuff of a real astronaut experience but for a Filipino it should be the next big thing. /Inquirer