to the stars

Seattle, Washington

Picture the fastest roller coaster you’ve ever been on. Now picture going 10 times faster. So fast that the g-forces compress your chest and make it hard to breathe. Minutes later, the bright light of day has changed to the darkness of space. You’re still accelerating, approaching 18,000 miles per hour. You’re near the outer limits of Earth’s atmosphere. If you unbuckle your seat belt, you’ll float right off your chair.

That’s what it was like for me on March 2, 1995, the first time I rocketed into space as a Space Shuttle astronaut. I went on to fly three more shuttle missions, including docking with the International Space Station. And on every one of them it felt as if my dad were right there with me, even though his dream of going into space had ended decades before.

I was 35 years old the day of that first takeoff. It was the culmination of a dream I’d nurtured since watching the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Back