Creatures That Live in the Sun

The original draft was written by hand in pencil, on both sides of the paper, as a generative writing assignment in 5th grade (yes, fifth grade). It was inspired by a notion my dad speculated about, involving ... well ... creatures that live in the sun! He also talked about a story he had read involving graphite-clad "sun boats" whose exterior boiled away to protect its occupants (it would last about 20 minutes in the photosphere); they used these sun boats to rearrange the sunspots so that it would rain on the day of their financer's funeral. All spellings, punctuation, capitalizations, ridiculous physics, etc. are as in the original.

You have been warned.

One day there was a rocket mission into the sun. The rocket was covered with 81 tons of graphite to be boiled away by the sun's incredible heat. The rocket would also use energy made by ions after it got out of the earth's atmosphere.

A day after the rocket was built, the astronaut (myself) was in it and the count down started. "20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, ignition, blastoff!"

The rocket took off.
I then was blasting up through the earth's atmosphere. Some time after that I had passed our moon and was heading directly for my target, the sun.

Some time after that, I had passed the yellow planet, Venus and was heading for Mercury.

At that time, the graphite was starting to boil off. I doubted that the graphite would last through the million-degree corona.

At that time I had passed Mercury and was on a direct path toward the sun.

Now, ½ a ton of graphite had boiled off the rocket.

Several hours later, I came into the sun's corona or atmosphere. It was 1,000,000 degrees in the corona, just like they said and already 3 more tons of graphite had boiled off. So already 3½ tons of graphite had boiled off.

When I got out of the corona, several minutes later, 8½ tons of graphite had boiled off.

I was glad when I got out of the million-degree corona and into the 6,000-degree sun. All I had to do now was go out in my better-than-asbestos suit and explore the sun.

Several minutes later, I got out of the rocket and saw a bird! A bird living in 6,000° Fahrenheit! Then I saw a tree living in that temprature! Both the bird and the tree had no protection at all! Then came the most startling thing – a bluish-green man! I then, after I saw him, yelled like mad, but the man revealed, in English, that he was friendly. I then became good friends with him. He showed me around the sun. He also showed me the sunspots and told me, "We use sunspots as freezers up here on the sun. They're only 5000°."

Several hours later, I had to leave before all the graphite boiled off. So I got into my rocket, blasted off and just barely made it out of the sun's corona before the graphite had boiled away altogether.

I had passed Mercury several minutes later and was heading toward the earth.

Several minutes later I had passed Venus and was on a direct path to the earth. Several minutes after that, I had landed the rocket safely on the ground.

Meanwhile, back on the sun, one of the people on the sun decided to put 73 tons of folac (like graphite, but much higher temprature) onto the outside of a space-ship and visit the earth.

The count down started after it was built. "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, ignition, blastoff!"

The spaceship then took off! He was then blasting toward the earth. It quickly passed Mercury and 25 minutes later it flew past Venus. It then, 15 minutes later, flew past the moon (luna).

Not long after that, it was picked up as a U.F.O. on a radar screen. The city alarm was then sounded.

The whole city spread in panic to scatter away from it. As the space ship got closer, the city got in more panic.

At that same time, the sun mission probe was just landing. I had gotten out of the probe at the same time the earth probe had landed. When I looked at the earth probe, what should I see coming out but my freind from the sun! He was wearing a highly insulative suit with heat stored up inside.

I then walked up to him, shook hands and said, "Well, so you wanted to visit the earth, hu?. How are things on the sun?"

He then said, "Well, things are doing pretty good on the sun and yes, I wanted to visit the earth."

We talked for a little while, for about 4 minutes.

Meanwhile, the police saw me talking to him, came over & said, "Don't talk to him anymore! He might be dangerous!"

But I then said, "Don't worry officer, he's my freind from the sun."

The policeman then told the city that he was friendly & that all of the people could come back out again. Then all of the people came out & started making freinds with him.

Several minutes later, though, it was time for him to go back to the sun.

He then waved goodby to his freinds & was off to his space ship.

After that he had gotten into his space ship & was off to the sun.

As far as I know now, he is back safely on the sun.

• At the time I wrote this, my dad had told me about a spacecraft propulsion technology called "ion engines." This was decades before the Deep Space One and Dawn spacecraft flew on their missions, so all I had to go by was the notion that these ion engine things were better than ordinary rockets in some fashion. I knew nothing of specific impulses or the Tsielkovsky equation at the time, or even what in heck an ion was; hence, my nonsensical phrasing here about how the rocketship would "use energy made by ions."
• I sure loved countdowns, didn't I?
• I'm pretty sure "the yellow planet" was a cheap plug for a certain story I'd typed the previous summer.
• When they say the sun's photosphere is "six thousand degrees", they mean 6000 degrees Kelvin. That's over 10 000 degrees Fahrenheit.
• In an episode of the original "Secret Squirrel" that aired as part of The Banana Splits, Secret Squirrel met with a seamy character named High Spy (his name being a parody of the TV show I Spy, and of the notion of a "Hi-Fi"). At one point in their meeting, High Spy blasted Secret Squirrel with a flamethrower, and quipped, "I'm doing as best as I can! Get it? Asbestos I can?" This pun was the inspiration for the "better-than-asbestos" suit in this story.
• In addition to the "final draft" I handed in to my 5th grade teacher, I also have the last (3rd) page of the first draft for comparison. The teacher would put corrections on our first draft, then we'd rewrite it with those corrections. Amazingly, the only differences between the first draft and the final draft were (A) the corrected spelling of "friend" and (B) the use of "and" instead of ampersands. My teacher apparently hated ampersands. Note that this story transcription uses the final draft for all but the last page, which uses the first draft; I'd have used the first draft for the entire transcription except that its early pages are missing.