Mike MassiminoAstronaut: An extraordinary journey in search of the mysteries of the universe. Closed Worlds Edmond Hamilton

It so happened that my favorite hobby is astronomy. And, going on a trip by car, I will certainly take a telescope or binoculars with me. Many modern telescopes are quite compact and mobile. They are easy to set up and very easy to use. You can easily take them with you to the country or on a trip. And any journey can become truly exciting and unforgettable if you decide to open a window to the universe for yourself.

The mysterious cosmos, hiding fantastic treasures in its depths, has been attracting our eyes and beckons us since ancient times. Of course, before the idea of \u200b\u200bcelestial bodies was completely different. More mystical and religious. Myriads of twinkling stars, a mysterious arc of pearly light, tailed comets, solar and lunar eclipses. All this people deified, giving them a completely different meaning.

Galileo Galilei was the first to use a telescope to observe the starry sky. His instrument consisted of two lenses - convex and concave. The optical scheme used greatly distorted the image. Much has changed since then, and telescopes have completely different systems. But astronomy is still one of the most interesting sciences. This family hobby will bring joy not only to adults, but to children. Their lively mind and craving for everything new will be delighted to dive into such an unusually fascinating world of the night sky.

You can tell your child about the constellations, "walk" on the surface of the moon with its many craters, seas and oceans. The breathtaking view of Jupiter with its belts, great red spot and satellite system will leave a lasting impression in your memory. Cassini gap in the rings of Saturn, Mars with its polar caps, double stars, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies... This mysterious world of the Universe will certainly captivate not only the child, but also you!

Have you ever seen the Orion Nebula?

Or the horsehead nebula?

Have you looked at the Milky Way?

Have you watched a solar or lunar eclipse?

All this is waiting for you and will help brighten up your journey by filling it with new extraordinary colors and unique sensations from immersion in this magical beautiful world!

P.S. Don't forget to take precautions. You can look at the Sun only through a special filter, in no case do this with the naked eye. Take maps and atlases of the starry sky to help you. If possible, install a program like Stellarium or Safari on your mobile phone. This will make it much easier for you to tour the starry sky and find the right objects.

Have a nice trip!

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Reviews about the book:

We read this book by the wonderful author Levitan with his son at 4 years old. Complete delight, I liked both parts and the first part where the basic concepts of the luminaries are given and the second part with a fantastic story about the planet of robots. The child showed a strong interest in this topic, dreams of becoming an astronaut or an astrophysicist) Now we are reading another book by Levitan, the Fairytale Universe. I'll tell you right away - these two books do not intersect! This book is for the first acquaintance with the topic of space. After it, we already bought all sorts of atlases of the universe and other popular science literature, the planetarium is now our home, all that remains is to buy a telescope, which my son has been begging for the second year already) I recommend this book to parents for the first acquaintance of their children with space!

Angelica, 48

One of the few cohorts of children's educational literature on the domestic book market!

Bass Alexander0

The book is approximately equally divided into two parts: "How Seryozha Became a Little Astronomer" and "How Robots Wanted to Fly to the Stars." I really liked the first part and quite a lot of questions to the second (and by and large to the last story from the first part). The first part talks about the basic concepts of astronomy: about the Sun, Moon and planets of the solar system, about the change of seasons, about stars and constellations and galaxies, about their movement and even a little about the life of stars (yellow dwarf - red giant - white dwarf). Moreover, it is read very easily, like a fairy tale, where the main character Seryozhka makes friends with heavenly bodies, visits them and listens to their stories about the Universe. Knowledge is presented very gradually, clearly and interestingly. True, the language is still simple, I would give it to read at 4-5 years old, no later. But the second part frankly disappointed me and seemed outdated. If the first part is just like fabulous astronomy for beginners, then here is a fantastic story about a certain planet of robots (made by people, but sent here for some reason into exile), in the minds of which it is necessary to arouse interest in the discoveries of the Universe (originally they were programmed not wanting to leave your planet). To do this, three people of the future arrive and choose three of the smartest robots to tell them everything about the Earth and modern science. And here it turns out some kind of hodgepodge of facts and fantastic conjectures about the possible progress of science. That is, on the one hand, information about galaxies, stars and the universe is repeated once again, the history of space exploration is shown (the first satellites, Gagarin, spaceships and the ISS) - this is all interesting and useful. But in parallel, the author brings in some fantastic forecasts about the stages of the knowledge of the cosmos and the general progress of mankind. And sometimes without additional knowledge it is difficult to understand - the author describes the facts or the possible future of science? In short, it seems to me that it would be better to separate the wheat from the chaff and make it clearer what we have today and what points in development are outlined. And even bigger complaints about the illustrations - they seem to be from old Soviet books about the Universe and, in general, some kind of outdated types and pictures. Yes, and I think it would be possible to illustrate more text - for some information, there are not enough pictures. Overall, the book is not bad, especially the first half, but not excellent.

Translator Victoria Krasnyanskaya

Scientific consultant Anton Pervushin

Editor Anton Nikolsky

Project Manager I. Seryogina

Correctors M. Milovidova, S. Chupakhina

Computer layout A. Fominov

Cover designer Y. Buga

Cover illustrations NASA

All rights reserved. The work is intended solely for private use. No part of the electronic copy of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and in corporate networks, for public or collective use without the written permission of the copyright owner. For copyright infringement, the legislation provides for the payment of compensation to the copyright holder in the amount of up to 5 million rubles (Article 49 of the LOAP), as well as criminal liability in the form of imprisonment for up to 6 years (Article 146 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

* * *

Thank you Gabby and Daniel for giving me a love I never thought was possible and giving me not only the inspiration to fulfill my dreams but also the desire to be an example to you so you can do the same.

Prologue
science fiction monster

On March 1, 2002, I left Earth for the first time. I boarded the Space Shuttle Columbia and climbed 300 miles into orbit. It was a special day, a day I've been dreaming about since I was probably seven years old, a day I've been training hard for since NASA accepted me into the space program six years ago. But even though I had been waiting and planning this trip for so long, I still wasn't ready. Nothing you do on this planet can truly prepare you for what you will truly experience when you leave it.

Our STS-109 mission was to service the Hubble Space Telescope. There were seven people on the team - five veterans and two newcomers - me and my buddy Duane Carey, an Air Force guy. Each astronaut gets a nickname, and we called him Digger. Because of my name and because of my height of 190 cm, they called me Massa.

We were supposed to start at night. At three in the morning we left the crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center to the bus that was waiting to take us to the launch pad. This is only the second shuttle launch since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, so there are helicopters circling around and SWAT guys standing around with the biggest automatic assault rifles I've ever seen. Launches always require special security measures, but now their usual level seemed not enough. Digger is standing next to me.

“I don't know,” I say. “I think they're here to make sure we get on the shuttle and don't run away.

I'm starting to get nervous. What did I agree to? I could swear there's a SWAT guy staring at me all the time. He is not looking for potential terrorists, but only looks at me. It's like his eyes are saying, "Don't even think about running away from here, buddy. Now it's too late. You volunteered yourself, so get on the bus.”

We get on the bus and drive to the launch pad. It's dark all around - even gouge out your eyes. The only bright spot on the horizon is the shuttle itself, which grows larger and larger as we approach: an orbital rocket plane and two solid rocket boosters, one on each side of a huge rusty-orange fuel tank. All this from top to bottom is flooded with streams of light.

The bus driver stops at the launch pad, releases us, then turns around and hurries to get out of the danger zone. Seven of us stand with our heads up and look at the giant spaceship going up to the height of the 17-story building above the mobile launch platform. I have seen the shuttle many times during training and test runs. But then the tank was dry, without the liquid oxygen and hydrogen that make up rocket fuel. It was filled only last night, because with fuel the rocket turns into a bomb.

Eerie sounds come from the shuttle. I can hear the fuel pumps working, the metal groaning and bending from the very cold fuel hundreds of degrees below zero. Rocket fuel burns at a very low temperature, so huge puffs of steam are formed at launch. Standing on the platform and looking up, I feel the power of this thing. She looks like a beast waiting for us.

I'm slowly starting to realize what we're going to do. Veteran guys who have already flown before me are excited to “high-five each other”. I look at them in horror, thinking to myself: “You are crazy, right?! Don't you understand that we're going to strap ourselves into a flying bomb that will send us hundreds of miles into the sky?"

I need to talk to Digger, I think. “Digger is as new as I am, but he flew an F-16 during the Iraq War. He's not afraid of anything. I'll talk to him and I'll be bolder myself." I turn to my comrade and see that he is looking up at the shuttle with his jaw dropped, his eyes bulging. It's like he's in a trance. He seems to be experiencing the same emotions as me. I tell him:

- Digger.

He is silent.

- Digger!

Silence again.

– Digger!

He shakes off his daze and turns to me. Digger is pale as a ghost.

I am often asked if it is scary to fly into space. At that moment, yes, I was scared. Before that, I dreamed of flying and was too busy training to feel fear, but when I stepped onto the site of the launch complex, the thought pierced me: maybe it was not the best idea to fly ?! This is the real bomb! How stupid anyway. How did I even get involved in this? But now there is nowhere to go.

While preparing for the launch, you experience a real adrenaline storm, but at the same time, this process itself is lengthy and tedious. From the foot of the complex's tower, an elevator takes you 28 meters to the service platform. There we have one delicate stop - it is called "the last toilet on Earth" - after which we need to wait. Then the guys from the ground staff, one by one, lead the crew members along the bridge leading from the service tower to the shuttle itself. You can stay on the platform for quite some time, waiting for your turn. Finally it comes to you, and, after going down the ladder, you find yourself in a small, white-painted room, where you are helped to put on a parachute. After that, you can wave goodbye to your family through the lens of the internal broadcast camera, and step through the edge of the shuttle hatch. You get to the middle deck, where the crew sleeps. If you climb a short ladder, you can get into the shuttle cabin. Both rooms are small: the inside of the ship is small and cozy. Four astronauts, including the commander and pilot, are sitting in the cockpit awaiting launch. They have windows there. And the other three remain on the middle deck.

The ground crew straps you into your seat. They also help secure the helmet to the neck of the orange pressure suit used during the launch and landing of the ship. You check the supply of oxygen and the condition of the suit equipment. And then you just lie there and wait. If, like me, you find yourself on the middle deck, where there are no windows, then you have nothing to look at, except for a row of lockers in front of the bow. So you have to spend several hours waiting for the end of all prelaunch procedures. At this time, you chat with teammates and wait. You can play tic-tac-toe on a tablet mounted on your knee. You expect to fly into space soon, but things may still turn out differently. NASA's mission control can cancel a launch at the last minute if the weather turns bad or there is doubt about the ship's readiness, and you can never be sure that the flight will take place until the shuttle is off the ground. When there is less than an hour left before the launch, you start looking back at your comrades, thinking: “OK, it looks like we really will fly!” Then it's 30 minutes before launch, then 10, then just one minute, and that's when things get serious.

In the final seconds of the countdown, the auxiliary power units start up. At the launch complex, did that beast scare you? Now he is waking up. Six seconds before launch, you hear the main engines spewing fire. The whole ship at this moment moves forward and tilts slightly. At the zero count, it straightens up again with a jerk - these are solid-fuel boosters flashing, and this is where you take off. There is no question whether you fly or not. There is no thought: “Are we moving already?” Quite different. It's like this: bang! - and you soar! Even before the maintenance tower stays down, you are moving faster than 150 km/h. From zero to 28,000 km / h you accelerates in just 8.5 minutes.

It's like in a dream. I feel like some huge fantastic monster has leaned over and grabbed me across my chest and is soaring up with me and rushing higher and higher and I can't help it. Immediately after the launch, I understand that all this training in case something goes wrong during the launch - evacuation from the shuttle cabin, using a parachute, preparing for an emergency landing - all the years of training spent on this, I understand, were completely meaningless. They are only needed to fill our consciousness with something that would give us the courage to climb inside this thing. Because if she falls, then she will fall! Everything will be either very good or very bad, and there are no intermediate options. The entire cabin of the shuttle is filled with emergency inscriptions and signs that say what to do and where to run, if anything. All this nonsense is needed only so that you have something to read before you die.

After about a minute of flight, the first shock passes, and a new feeling rolls over me. I suddenly realize that I'm flying far, far away. Really very far. This is not just "bye-bye", but the present "Goodbye". There were times when I would leave home and go on vacation or road trips, fly to California, or go hiking in East Texas. But this time, my home, my safe haven, to which I have been returning all my life, is left behind as hopelessly as never before. Here's what I understand: this is the first time I'm really moving away from home.

The journey to orbit takes only 8.5 minutes. That's how long you sit and think, your last day has come or is it not yet. You can't talk because your microphone is on, and you can't blurt out something stupid on the general channel and divert attention to yourself. This is not the time to be smart. You just lie there and look at your comrades, your ears are blocked by the deafening roar of the engines, and you feel how the shuttle shakes and trembles, escaping from the captivity of the earth's atmosphere. After about 2.5 minutes, the overload rises to 3g, which means that your body weighs three times more than usual. It's like having a bunch of bricks thrown on your chest. All together can be described as an act of institutionalized violence, as well as the most magnificent example of the human desire for speed and power.

When the atmosphere is left behind, the bolts with which the fuel tank was screwed to us are undermined. You hear those two muffled explosions through the walls of the shuttle - bang bang! - and now the fuel tank is dropped, the engines are silent and everything ends as suddenly as it began. The roar stops, the shaking stops, and it becomes quiet as in the grave. Only the quiet rustle of cooling fans of some equipment is heard. An ominous calm surrounds you.

You are in space.

Now that the engines are off and we're in orbit, the shuttle is no longer accelerating. You think he has stopped. You are speeding at 28,000 km/h, but your inner ear keeps telling your brain that you are standing still. Your vestibular system works in the conditions of gravity, in the absence of which the corresponding signals do not arrive and the system considers that you are motionless. Therefore, when the engines stop, the feeling is that you are rushing, rushing forward and suddenly stop. And it seems to you that you are sitting on a chair somewhere in the living room, with the only difference being that you are still sprawled and buckled up. This is completely confusing.

The first thing I ask myself is, "Hey, are you alive?" You have to think a little before answering: "Yeah, alive." We made it. We took off safely. For a minute or two I try to get my bearings. And then, starting to get used to the new environment, I understand: it's time to work. I raise my hands and take off my helmet. And, just like Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13, I put him in front of my face and let go - and the helmet floats in the air in front of me, weightless.

Part 1
"When I grow up, I want to be Spider-Man"

1. Perfectly good

The first week in the astronaut corps is very similar to the first week in any other job. You go to meetings, fill out paperwork, figure out the details of the new health insurance. In the first week, me and the guys from my set were lucky. It was at this time that a meeting of astronauts was held at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center. Almost every living legend from the Mercury and Apollo programs participated, including Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. My hero. Hero for everyone.

Our curator, Peigi Maltsby, has been a real mother hen to us, leading her new chicks through the rough patches of the training program. She asked Neil Armstrong to talk to us. He agreed, but said that he would only talk to us, freshly baked astronauts - he did not need a large audience and a large crowd of people.

I've already seen Armstrong once. In 1989, during my graduate studies, I interned at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. That summer, they celebrated the 20th anniversary of the moon landing on a grand scale. The anniversary was attended by Armstrong and other members of the team: Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. From the far end of the hall, crowded with several hundred people, I saw Neil deliver a speech, but I did not get to meet him in person or shake his hand. Now, seven years later, I will not only meet him, but get to know like an astronaut. Nothing could be worse than this.

True, in fact, I have not yet been an astronaut. When you qualify for NASA, you become an Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN). To meet with Armstrong, all candidates were gathered in the astronaut conference room - room number 6600 in building 4S. This is a very important room. Each NASA flight has its own emblem, which is supposed to commemorate the mission and the names of the astronauts who participated in it. Emblems of all expeditions hang on the walls of the conference hall, starting from the first flight of Alan Shepard on the Mercury in 1961. When you enter there, you feel the whole history of this place. The goal of every astronaut entering the conference room is to leave their name on the wall. We huddled around the conference table like curious schoolchildren. Armstrong came in and talked to us for several minutes. He was elderly, but not old: thinning hair, glasses, jacket and tie. Neal seemed cordial and friendly, but at the same time he was a person who can only be addressed with the deepest respect. When he got up and spoke, it turned out that he spoke very quietly and even shyly.

Armstrong talked to us for about 15 minutes and during that time he didn't say a word about walking on the moon or what it means to be an astronaut. Instead, he recounted his days as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base in California flying the X-15, the supersonic rocket plane that broke all speed and altitude records in the 1960s by climbing 63 km above the Earth's surface - to the upper boundary of the atmosphere, almost to the edge of space. That's how Neil Armstrong thought of himself - as a pilot. Not as the first person to walk on the moon, but as a guy who loved to fly cool planes and was glad that he had the opportunity to do so.

I think by emphasizing his time as a test pilot and not the first man to walk on the moon, Armstrong was trying to tell us that life should not be subordinated to the achievement of one great goal, because when that goal is achieved, life will go further. What will inspire you then? It is very important that you have a passion, something that you love to do, when the greatest joy for you will be to get up in the morning and do what you love every day. For Armstrong, it was a flight. He said: "Well, yes, I flew to the moon, but I also flew the X-15." The very fact that he flew these planes every day made him the happiest person in the world.

When he finished speaking, Armstrong answered a few questions and agreed to sign the photographs. He stood at the head of the conference table, and we lined up to shake his hand and get an autograph. I was almost at the very end, and as I moved forward, I noticed that everyone was saying the same thing. Everyone told Armstrong where they were when they saw him walk on the moon. When I became an astronaut, I was 33 years old and one of the youngest in the group. This meant that everyone in line was old enough to remember the first moon landing and everyone had something to say: "I was at my girlfriend's." "I was in the basement of my parents' house." "I've been to the Catskills." And so on and so forth. Since everyone on Earth knows where Armstrong was on July 20, 1969, why not tell him where you were at that time? I realized that the whole life of this man in the last 27 years consisted of this. Every single day every new acquaintance told him the same thing, and he politely listened, nodded and smiled.

I decided that I would do something differently. When it was my turn, instead of telling my story of where I was during the moon landing, I shook Armstrong's hand and asked,

Do you feel like this every time you meet people? Do they tell you where they were when you walked on the moon?

Do you hear many such stories?

- Yes, it's like that all the time.

- Doesn't that annoy you?

He shrugged.

- No, it's all right.

I never told Neil Armstrong where I was when he walked on the moon. I didn't want to do it, even when he said everything was fine. But I remember very well where I was, because that was the moment that changed my life. I was six years old (soon to be seven) and we were sitting in our living room watching a black and white TV with my parents and my sister Franny, who was 13 years old. She was wrapped in a pink bathrobe, and I was wearing pinstriped baseball pajamas, worn and frayed, which I had inherited from my brother. Mom's parents lived upstairs, and they came down to watch the moon landing with us.

I'm just glued to the TV. The fact that Neil Armstrong takes the first steps on the moon just "blew up" my brain. But the fact that I saw it on TV made the event almost ordinary, like I was being shown some old TV show. When I went outside after the broadcast, I thought about how incredible it all is. I remember how I stood in the courtyard in front of our house, looked at the moon for a long time, thinking: “Wow, now people are walking there!” For a six-year-old boy from the suburbs of Long Island, this was the most exciting event in the world - something that sunk deep into my soul.

Walking on the moon was a wonderful moment for me and for the whole country. Life gives us not so many such minutes. Everyone loved the Apollo astronauts: my father, my sister, my friends, my teachers. No public figure has ever achieved such absolute universal admiration. Especially in those days. The 1960s were coming to an end, and everyone around seemed to have gone crazy. People were shot at. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated. Vietnam was tearing the country apart. Riots broke out every summer. And in the midst of all this, for one night the whole world stopped and looked at the same thing - perfectly beautiful.

I remember, even at that age, I thought: “This is the most important thing that is happening now - and not only now, but in general. This will mark our presence on this planet: we were the first people to leave it.” Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were space explorers. People will read about them in 500 years, as we read about Christopher Columbus now. These people have become my heroes. They became the best example of the toughest guys.

In 1969 I turned seven years old, and at that age there is always something that makes every year in your life especially memorable. Two things happened to me that year: Apollo 11 landed on the moon and, even more incredible, the Mets won the 1969 World Series. Space and Major League Baseball were my biggest passions. Mets pitcher Tom Seaver was on my list of childhood heroes right after my dad and the Apollo 11 astronauts. But on the night of the moon landing, the World Series was still many months away. That night I said to myself, “Nothing else matters. Here it is. That's who I want to be." Becoming an astronaut wasn't just cool, it was the most important thing one could do in one's life.

From that moment on, I became obsessed with space in the way that only a little boy can be obsessed with anything. I could only talk about it. At our school summer camp, we had a space parade to celebrate the moon landing. The children had to dress up in space-related costumes. I wanted an astronaut suit. My mom was a jack of all trades. She took the gray baby elephant costume she made for me when I was in first grade, cut off its tail, pinned on some of her father's Army medals, and sewed an American flag onto the left sleeve. We replaced the cardboard elephant ears with Steve Canyon's shiny black plastic helmet, added goggles, and I had an astronaut suit.

My brother Joe was working in midtown Manhattan that summer, and one afternoon he went to FAO Schwarz toy store and bought me an astronaut Snoopy toy. He was about 20 cm tall and was wearing an Apollo spacesuit: helmet, life support system, lunar boots, etc. I still remember seeing Joe walking home from the bus stop with a box containing Snoopy. I unpacked the toy right in front of the house. All summer long I didn't take off the astronaut costume that my mother made for me, and all I did was play space flights in the backyard with my astronaut Snoopy. I fiddled with this toy until it was frayed, the enamel on it cracked and one leg came off. (Snoopy is still with me, only now he has been in space for real.)

I was obsessed with the idea of how to learn more about astronauts. The public library was right around the corner on Lincoln Street, and I sat in it all day and read everything I could find about the space program. There were few books, but I studied everything in detail and re-read them several times. The library had a book about the early astronauts of the Mercury program, "We Are Seven," and another book about Gus Grissom, who died in the Apollo 1 fire at the Kennedy Space Center launch complex. I read magazines Time And life and everything else that came across in the library - everything that he could get his hands on.

That fall, I went to second grade and at school only talked about space. I have become a real expert in this field. My best friend then was Mike Quarequio, nicknamed Q, with whom we are friends to this day. He recalls walking into the classroom on the first day of class, talking about EVA suits, the cooling system they use, and how the life support system works. I became known as "the boy who knows the most about space in the class." I could give the names of all the astronauts and the characteristics of the rockets that were used for the flights. I knew everything about space that a seven-year-old boy from Long Island could.

But although I was obsessed with space, I never got into the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers stories. Colonies in space, other dimensions, and jetpack flights - it was all too implausible. I loved science fiction such as Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and From the Earth to the Moon. What I liked about the stories of Jules Verne is that they made me feel that everything is happening for real. It was science fiction, but you saw that everything was plausible, just like it happens in the real world. In Journey to the Center of the Earth, the heroes make their way with picks and shovels. In From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne accurately predicted many things about space travel, from the metal the characters used to build the spaceship to the launch method that uses the planet's rotation to give the ship extra speed. And the writer was able to imagine all this back in 1865!

I wasn't interested in fantasy stories about space travel. I was interested in how space flights happen in reality. I needed to know how people could go into space, and at that time the only way to get there was to join the NASA program, that is, get an American flag on my left sleeve and “ride” a Saturn V rocket. I had only one problem: where I lived, children do not become astronauts when they grow up.

Many people, when they get to know me, do not believe that I have been in space. They say that I look like a guy who works in a small shop in Brooklyn and cuts cold meats. My grandparents were immigrants from Italy. My grandfather Joseph Massimino was from Linguaglossa, a place near Mount Etna on the island of Sicily. In 1902 Joseph came to New York and eventually bought a farm in the upstate near Warwick. My father Mario Massimino grew up there. After leaving the farm, my father moved to New York, to the Bronx, where he met my mother, Vincenza Gianferrata. Her family was from Palermo, a city in Sicily, and they lived in Carroll Gardens, the Italian quarter of Brooklyn. She and her father got married in 1951. He was 28 and she was 25, which at that time was quite late for marriage.

Although my father never went to college, while working, he began taking fire safety courses at New York University and soon became an inspector with the New York City Fire Department. He was involved in fire prevention - checking apartment buildings and business centers to see if there were enough fire extinguishers, sprinkler systems and emergency exits. He was a smart guy who worked hard and worked his way up the ranks until he became head of fire prevention for the New York City Fire Department. My mother raised children, for which she deserves a medal.

The family lived in the Bronx, where my older sister and brother were born. Shortly after their birth, their parents decided to leave the city. They bought a house at 32 Commonwealth Street in Franklin Square, Long Island. There I was born on August 19, 1962. My brother was 10 years older than me and three years older than my sister. I was born as a result of an oversight - or, as my mother put it more mildly, "it came as a surprise" - of my parents. Mother always told me that I came into this world for some reason, because she was not going to have any more children after the birth of my brother and sister.

Franklin Square is located near Queens and can be reached via the Hampstead Expressway. When I was a kid, the neighborhood was mostly Italian-Americans—Lobacarro, Milana, Adamo, Bruno. Our family was a big Italian family. My mom only had one sister, Coney, who lived in Brooklyn, but my dad had five siblings who lived in Queens or Long Island. Uncle Frank and Aunt Angie lived next to us across the street, and Uncle Tom and Aunt Marie were around the corner. Uncle Romeo and Aunt Ann lived nearby at College Point, Queens. There were always uncles and aunts, cousins and cousins around me.

Franklin Square was a blue collar city. Many people worked in New York. A few people who no one really knew what they were doing drove huge Lincolns and put a lot of money in your pocket at weddings. Some children went off to college, but most attended local schools and stayed at home. Many became police officers. Your father was a policeman, so you become a policeman - that's what people thought. My cousin Peter was pretty damn smart, and when he got to Princeton, my Aunt Sally was crying, moaning, wailing, begging him not to go because she didn't want him to leave his family and go to college... in New Jersey.

My world was tiny. People don't think about leaving Long Island, let alone going into space. My friend Q's father was a pharmacist and his mother was a school teacher. He was one of the few friends of mine whose parents graduated from college. My parents always encouraged me to do what I wanted, but as a fire inspector and housewife, they could do little to help me become an astronaut.

I wanted more than anything to visit the Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History, and it was a big deal for me when my parents finally took me there. I brought home photographs of the planets and books on astronomy. But that was my only contact with the world of space. How to get into NASA or what college you need to go to to get there - I had no one to ask these questions. Our school didn't have a science club where we could build and launch rockets. None of my friends were interested in space, it was a thing that I did alone. I had my astronaut suit, astronaut Snoopy and library books, that's all. I didn't even know anyone who had a telescope.

But even if I had such an acquaintance, I still did not at all look like a candidate fit for flight into orbit. I have never flown in an airplane. Perhaps I made idols out of astronauts in part precisely because they were different than I was. They were fearless adventurers, and I was a clumsy child. By the time I moved on to high school, my eyesight was failing. I was so tall and thin that I could perform scientific experiments on myself: if someone wanted to know how the bones of the human body are located, all I had to do was take off my shirt and demonstrate.

From English. Special Weapons and Tactics (special weapons and tactics) - US police special forces. - Approx. ed.

. The New York Mets are a professional baseball team that plays in the Eastern Division of the National League of Major League Baseball. - Approx. per.

Snoopy (from the English Snoopy - “curious”) is a fictional beagle dog, a popular character in the Peanuts comic book series. - Approx. per.

Flash Gordon is a fictional character in the science fiction comic book of the same name, first published in 1934. - Approx. per.

Buck Rogers is a fictional character who first appeared in Philip Nolan's Armageddon 2419 A.D., a 1928 novella. The adventures of Buck Rogers in comics, films, radio shows, and television have become an important part of popular culture in the United States. - Approx. per.