Mike Massimino - Spaceman (Adapted for Young Readers): The True Story of a Young Boys Journey to Becoming an Astronaut

Since the publication of Spaceman: An Astronauts Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe, I have visited many schools, libraries, and bookstores. A question I often get from younger people is: But what kept you going after NASA rejected you three times? I respond with a story from my days in graduate school at MIT. I was making dinner in my apartment before a night of studying. I had the television news on in the background, and they were showing an interview with some astronauts. I took a break from cooking to watch. When I saw the astronauts floating in the space shuttle answering questions, I thought, That is exactly what I want to do. No question. I had clarity. Being an astronaut was the job for me.

Almost immediately, another thought entered my mind: But you will never get a chance to do that, becoming an astronaut is impossible. That is the way I felt about it a lot of the time, that I was pursuing something that could never happen. But that was not true. It was not impossible. It was just unlikely or really hard. If I were to look at it mathematically, the chances of my becoming an astronaut were maybe one out of a million, or 0.000001, which is a non-zero number and by definition possible. The only way that 1 at the end of that string of zeros becomes a zero and then by definition my chances of becoming an astronaut would become 0.0, or impossible, was if I gave up. Once you give up, you know the outcomeit wont happen. It is impossible. I encourage young people to think about that 1 at the end of the string of zeros and not give up on their dreams.

I started thinking about rewriting Spaceman for young readers because I wanted to emphasize more of the formative experiences from my younger years that led me to the astronaut program. I have received many nice letters from readers. Here is a bit of one that stood out and touched me:

Your book has inspired me to never give up on my dreams. I am about to move to another state and Im a little nervous but your book taught me that sometimes things are scary but if you try you can get through it.

I was six years old when I watched Neil Armstrong take those first steps on the moon in July of 1969. The exploits of Armstrong and his fellow astronauts totally captivated me. I wanted to grow up and become an astronaut. But I had no idea how that could happen, so my dream faded after about a year. As I grew up, however, my interest in math, science, and space exploration persisted and blossomed, and eventually I earned an engineering degree in college. Pursuing my passions led me back to my six-year-old dream of becoming an astronaut, and my studies put me in a position where becoming an astronaut was a possibility. I have learned that education can make possible what at first might seem impossible. It is possible for someone to fulfill a dream they have as a kid or to discover and pursue a dream career that never crossed their mind until they learn about it later in life. I now have a new dream. I hope that after reading this book, you will be inspired to never give up. If I can realize my little-kid dream, you can realize yours, too.

On March 1, 2002, I left Earth for the first time. I got on board the space shuttle Columbia and I blasted 350 miles into orbit. It was a big day, a day Id been dreaming about since I was seven years old, a day Id been training for nonstop since NASA had accepted me into the astronaut program six years earlier. But even with all that waiting and planning, I still wasnt ready. Nothing you do on this planet can ever truly prepare you for what it means to leave it.

Our flight, STS-109, was a servicing mission for the Hubble Space Telescope. We were a crew of seven, five veterans and two rookies, me and my buddy Duane Carey, an Air Force pilot. We called him Digger. Every astronaut gets an astronaut nickname. Because of my last name everybody called me Mass.

Ours was going to be a night launch. At three in the morning, we walked out of crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center to where the astro van was waiting to take us out to the launchpad.

We got on, everything pitch-black all around us. The only light on the horizon was the shuttle itself, which got bigger and bigger as we approached, the space shuttle with its two solid rocket boosters and its massive rust-orange fuel tank, all lit up from below with very bright floodlights.

The driver pulled up to the launchpad, dropped us off, and then turned and hightailed it out of the blast zone. The seven of us stood there, craning our necks, looking up at our gigantic spaceship towering seventeen stories high above the launchpad. Id been out to the space shuttle many times before for training, running drills. But all those previous times, there was never any gas in the tank, the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that is the rocket fuel. The fuel tank is not filled until a few hours before the launch, because once you add rocket fuel it turns into a bomb sitting on the launchpad, and the area is cleared except for a few technicians who will help strap the crew into the shuttle. Usually a hub of activity, it now seemed almost deserted.