Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce. - 2008

Liam is only twelve, but looks much older. Being a postitive and curious individual, he exploits this, taking a class-mate on father/daughter outings and having a great unsupervised time in theme parks. His real fascination is with space exploration and he cons a rather wacky space program to take him on as an trainee astronout. Brilliant descriptions of zero gravity effects and the fall-out of massive deceptions that come unstuck. All through reading this I thought, "Why wouldn't you!"