What did you want to be when you grew up?

I simply love the monster.com ads: "I want to be forced into early retirement."

an inventor

A cook.

Later on I figured out that I wanted to be a toymaker. I'm still working on it.

For a while I wanted to be an airplane.

An famous actress/singer

It changed at least once a month. I remember wanting to be a nurse for awhile. I don't know what I was thinking. That's probably the last job I can see myself in, now.

You put lawyer in twice.

Whoops!!! The qualification system has failed me!!!

Mariah: That's it, be like everyone else and blame the system ;)

start out as generally a doctor...then funneled to physical therapist...but i'm a failure :(

I wanted to be a minister or a priest.

*snicker* I actually wanted to be a model.

I wanted to be a teacher or a nurse. And someday, I'm actually going to be one of those! (The second one.)

Earliest memory was wanting to be an architect when I was five. After that, I had a long stretch of having no idea, until I was well into university.

A rock star

I wanted to be a vet. I realized it wasn't for me when taking a college tour and seeing an operation for the first time.

I went through periods of wanting to be an astronaut, a paleontologist, a marine biologist, a pilot, and a physicist. That one lasted into college, then I changed majors for playwrighting. I ended up being a technical writer, a software tester, a software consultant, development manager, and now I'm CEO of an internet startup. I still write for fun on the side, eventually I'll turn it into a full-time job.

"I don't wanna grow up..."

"...i'm a toys'r'us kid...."

I wanted to be a famous actress. :)

I wanted to be a doctor first and foremost, but other times I wanted to be a nurse, teacher, chef, and secretary.
(I succeeded at secretary)

scientist

a forest ranger

maybe a mad scientist, too... back in the days when they were glamorous and cool - before prozac

Amongst other things scientist (field was never thought of), priest, politician, teacher.

JJG- You wanted to be a priest, but you never enter a church or temple because you feel you will burst in to flames?!?!

Oscar: which is probably why he can't be one. What a job hazard that would be...

drdt- lol

artist, musician, writer

Coast Guard. :)

lawyer two times.

Oscar: it was when I was young and innocent, which would be about 14 years ago.

cut-and-pasted from what I said the last two times:

"A Builder of Everything". It took another twenty-odd years for me to realize this meant "Generalist" and not "Architect".

I wanted to be a social worker and deal with adoption, foster care and juvenal cases of all sorts.

It varied a bit, but tended to things like inventor, medical researcher, engineer, architect. For a while I wanted to be a cosmetologist (the chemical engineering kind, which I guess is closest to what I am now). Pilot and astronaut, too, but when my eyes turned bad, those were out. I checked 'celebrity' because I wanted to be a Nobel laureate for medicine for quite some time.

The six million dollar man. I'm not kidding; my mom tried to talk sense to me by saying "they'd have to cut off your legs and arm..." to which I cheerily responded "I know; they'll give me better ones!" I was 6 or so at the time.

a very old person!

I remember we did an exercise at school once where we had to write about people who did different jobs. One kid did well for saying that he wanted to be a dustman when he grew up, so when we did postmen, I said I wanted to be a postman when I grew up. And I got a good mark for it too. Any kids reading this - bear it in mind. It will serve you well. Oh, but I don't want to be a postman any more. Too hard a life for me.

Doctor - I wound up being a chemist, which is close.

Like my father: director of a zoo.

I alternated between an astronaut and an airplane pilot before I discovered the world of computers at age 14. Now, I'm trying to groom myself for the role of CTO at an internet startup (yes, the same one jonathan is attempting to be a CEO), and will hopefully start taking pilot lessons sometime this spring. Now, if I can just convince dab to start his private space company his been talking about and convince him to hire me.

Lion, take a look at http://www.rotaryrocket.com first. Suppose they pull off 7,000 lbs to LEO at $1000/lb within the next three years. It's time to start thinking about the next step. What do we do once we're out there?

dab, build a web sight up there, sell advertising on it, and then have an IPO. Isn't that what everyone is supposed to do these days?

But who wants to do what everyone is supposed to do. Besides, after reading Slashdot the other day about all the intellectual property lawsuits being filed, its time to move.

I've got another idea.

Stage 1: Build and launch an orbital transfer vehicle for moving satellites between LEO and GEO.

Stage 2: Launch an orbital processing station to convert water to rocket fuel. Now satellites only have to bring water with them which is safer and more compact. It's also a set up for stage 4.

Stage 3: Launch orbital repair equipment. This is either manned space or remotely operated devices so you don't have to bring satellites or the OTV down to Earth to work on them.

Stage 4: Send an automated prospector to some near Earth asteroid and bring back water to process into fuel. This reduces the costs for people sending satellites to GEO but it also can be used to refuel SSTO spacecraft for the descent to Earth meaning they can have better mass ratios to orbit.

Depending on how fast you move through the stages, you might want to reverse 3 and 4. A sideline might be space salvage.

On we plow
the big bully try to put his finger in my chest
try to tell me , tell me, he's the best
but I don't really give a good gosh darn cause
I got my lunchbox and I'm armed real well
I got my lunchbox and I'm armed real well
I got my lunchbox and I'm armed real well
I wanna grow up
I wanna be
a big rock and roll star
I wanna grow up
I wanna be
so no one fudges with me

I wanted to be a science teacher. I'm a scientist. Not bad....

dab: interesting ideas, but the point of H-O chemical rocketry is the thrust, and thrust is really only important for getting off planets. There's much more future in ion drives (nice high specific impulse) or magnetic loop drives (theoretically infinite specific impulse, but require a nearby planetary magnetic field) for the kinds of things you're talking about.

**phi: I'm not certain that you'd want to boost your satellite from LEO to GEO on the slow upward spiral through the Van Allen belts that ion propulsion would necessitate.

Oh, I'm more than willing to consider other propulsion possibilities. I like solar sails too. I mainly wanted to start thinking past getting to LEO; there are lots of people working on that. Suppose they succeed, what next? Not only something that makes money (though that's important too) but something that leads to follow-on projects that hopefully also make money.

I swore I would be a veterinarian, but look where I am now, in a stinking office building. I don't think I could actually operate on animals though, but I could protect them in some way or something, like hunt the hunters. just kidding

I want to be a penguin.

Rock star..Yeah......dirty dirty dirty...Rock star......Yeah.........

I wanted to be an archeologist, digging for Dinosaur bones... that and open a store.

a flight attendant...boy I'm glad I changed my mind!

Astronomer and teacher were the big ones.

As best as I can remember it I would have said ``a scientist'' or ``a saint.'' I don't remember ever actually saying so, though.

Clown, Witch-Doctor, Alchemist, Astronaut, Rock-Star, Artist. Later I decided to combine all these things into some unnamed occupation. Unfortunately the pay is lousy.

A physicist.

You have lawyer in there twice!

Lawyer, doctor, celebrity, elephant, now I don't know what I'm going to do.

Prime Minister. I still want to be. I'm gettin' there.

I wanted to be a physicist. I didn't change my mind until graduate school, where I switched to computer science.

librarian or vet