Mike Massimino - Spaceman: An Astronaut’s Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

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 guy. We called him Digger. Every astronaut gets an astronaut nickname. Because of my name and because Im six feet three inches, everybody called me Mass.

Ours was going to be a night launch. At three in the morning, we walked out of crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center to where the astro van was waiting to take us out to the launchpad. This was only the second shuttle mission since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and there were helicopters circling overhead and a team of SWAT guys standing guard with the biggest assault rifles Id ever seen. Launches had always had tight security, but now it was even more so. Digger was standing right next to me. Wow, he said, look at the security. Maybe its a 9/11 thing.

I said, I dont know. I think theyre here to make sure we actually get on.

I was starting to get nervous. What had I signed up for? I could swear that one of the SWAT guys was staring at menot at potential terrorists, but right at me. It felt like his eyes were saying, Dont even think about running for it, buddy. Its too late now. You volunteered for this. Now get on my bus.

We got on and rode out to the launchpad, 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 orbiter and the two solid rocket boosters on each side of that massive rust-orange fuel tank, the whole thing lit up from below with floodlights.

The driver pulled up to the launchpad, let us out, then turned and high-tailed it out of the blast zone. The seven of us stood there, craning our necks, looking up at this gigantic spaceship towering seventeen stories high above the mobile launcher platform. Id been out to the shuttle plenty of times for training, running drills. But the times Id been near it, there was never any gas in the tank, the liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen that make rocket fuel. They dont put it in until the night before, because once you add rocket fuel it turns into a bomb.

The shuttle was making these ungodly sounds. I could hear the fuel pumps working, steam hissing, metal groaning and twisting under the extreme cold of the fuel, which is hundreds of degrees below zero. Rocket fuel burns off at very low temperatures, sending huge billows of smoke pouring out. Standing there, looking up, I could feel the power of this thing. It looked like a beast waiting there for us.

The full realization of what we were about to do was starting to dawn on me. The veterans, the guys whod flown before, they were in front of me, high-fiving each other, getting excited. I stared at them like Are they insane? Dont they see were about to strap ourselves to a bomb thats going to blow us hundreds of miles into the sky?

I need to talk to Digger, I thought. Diggers a rookie like me, but he flew F-16 fighter jets in the Gulf War. Hes not afraid of anything. Hell make me feel better. I turned to him, and he was staring up at this thing with his jaw hanging down, his eyes wide open. It was like he was in a trance. He looked the way I felt. I said, Digger.

No response.

Digger!

No response.

Digger!

He shook himself out of it. Then he turned to me. He was white as a ghost.

People always ask me if I was ever scared going into space. At that moment, yes, I was scared. Up to that point Id been too excited and too busy training to let myself get scared, but out there at the launchpad it hit me: Maybe this wasnt such a good idea. This was really dumb. Why did I do this? But at that point there was no turning back.

When youre getting ready to launch, you have this big rush of adrenaline, but at the same time the whole process is drawn out and tedious. From the bottom of the launch tower, you take an elevator up to the launch platform at ninety feet. You make one last pit stop at a bathroom up therethe Last Toilet on Earth, they call itand then you wait. One at a time, the ground crew takes each astronaut across the orbiter access arm, the gangway between the tower and the shuttle itself. You can be out on the platform for a while, waiting for your turn. Finally they come and get you, taking you across the arm into a small white room where they help you put on your parachute harness. Then you wave good-bye to your family on the closed-circuit camera and go in through the shuttle hatch. You enter on the mid-deck, where the crews living quarters are. Up a small ladder is the flight deck. Neither is very big; its pretty cozy inside the shuttle. Four astronauts, including the pilot and commander, sit on the flight deck for launch. They get windows. The remaining three sit on the mid-deck.