SPACEMAN
- On March 1, 2002, I left Earth for the first time. I got onboard the Space Shuttle Columbia and I blasted 350 miles into orbit. It was a big day. I’d dreamed of going to space ever since I was a little kid. I’d been training for it non-stop since NASA had accepted me into the astronaut program six years before. But even with all that waiting and planning, I still wasn’t ready. Nothing on this planet can ever really prepare you for what it means to leave it. -
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that’s about to go from zero to 17,500 mph in an instant? Or to look back on the earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you’re about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind’s chance to unlock the universe’s secrets? Mike Massimino has been there, and in Spaceman he puts you inside the suit, with all the zip and buoyancy of life in microgravity.
Massimino’s childhood space dreams were born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, but his journey to realizing those dreams was as unlikely as it is captivating. Growing up in a working-class Long Island family, Massimino catapulted himself to Columbia and then MIT, only to flunk his qualifying exams and be rejected twice by NASA before making it to the final round of astronaut selection—where he was told his poor eyesight meant he’d never make the cut. But even that couldn’t stop him from finally earning his wings, making the jump to training in F-38 fighter jets and preparing his body—and soul—for the journey to the cosmos.
Taking us through the surreal wonder and beauty of his first spacewalk, the tragedy of losing friends in the Columbia shuttle disaster, and the development of his lifelong love for the Hubble telescope—which he’d be tasked with saving on his final mission— Massimino has written an ode to never giving up and the power of teamwork to make anything possible. Spaceman invites us into a rare, wonderful world where the nerdiest science meets the most thrilling adventure, and pulls back a curtain on just what having “the right stuff” really means.
Mike Massimino served as an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1996 to 2014. He is the veteran of two NASA space flights, STS-109 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in March 2002 and STS-125 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 2009. Both missions were to service the Hubble Space Telescope. During those flights he logged a total of 571 hours, 47 minutes in space, and a cumulative total of 30 hours, 4 minutes on four spacewalks. For his work he was awarded two NASA Space Flight Medals and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.
Now retired from NASA, Mike is a full-time professor with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, New York, NY. He is also Senior Advisor for Space Programs at the Intrepid Museum. He has previously served as executive director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, worked as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and as a research engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. He was awarded two patents for innovations in the field of remote-operated robotics.
A graduate of Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mike currently lives with his wife Carola in New York City, where both his daughter Gabby and son Daniel are in college.
Tanner Colby is the author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, a narrative history of modern race-relations in the United States, which was nominated for the American Library Association’s 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction. He is also is the coauthor of Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days, Belushi: A Biography and the New York Times bestseller, The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. He is a frequent contributor to Slate magazine on issues of race, politics, and culture, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son.
Massimino’s childhood space dreams were born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, but his journey to realizing those dreams was as unlikely as it is captivating. Growing up in a working-class Long Island family, Massimino catapulted himself to Columbia and then MIT, only to flunk his qualifying exams and be rejected twice by NASA before making it to the final round of astronaut selection—where he was told his poor eyesight meant he’d never make the cut. But even that couldn’t stop him from finally earning his wings, making the jump to training in F-38 fighter jets and preparing his body—and soul—for the journey to the cosmos.
Taking us through the surreal wonder and beauty of his first spacewalk, the tragedy of losing friends in the Columbia shuttle disaster, and the development of his lifelong love for the Hubble telescope—which he’d be tasked with saving on his final mission— Massimino has written an ode to never giving up and the power of teamwork to make anything possible. Spaceman invites us into a rare, wonderful world where the nerdiest science meets the most thrilling adventure, and pulls back a curtain on just what having “the right stuff” really means.
Mike Massimino served as an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1996 to 2014. He is the veteran of two NASA space flights, STS-109 aboard Space Shuttle Columbia in March 2002 and STS-125 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 2009. Both missions were to service the Hubble Space Telescope. During those flights he logged a total of 571 hours, 47 minutes in space, and a cumulative total of 30 hours, 4 minutes on four spacewalks. For his work he was awarded two NASA Space Flight Medals and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal.
Now retired from NASA, Mike is a full-time professor with the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University, New York, NY. He is also Senior Advisor for Space Programs at the Intrepid Museum. He has previously served as executive director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University, worked as an assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and as a research engineer for McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. He was awarded two patents for innovations in the field of remote-operated robotics.
A graduate of Columbia University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mike currently lives with his wife Carola in New York City, where both his daughter Gabby and son Daniel are in college.
Tanner Colby is the author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black: The Strange Story of Integration in America, a narrative history of modern race-relations in the United States, which was nominated for the American Library Association’s 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-fiction. He is also is the coauthor of Remember the Time: Protecting Michael Jackson in His Final Days, Belushi: A Biography and the New York Times bestseller, The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts. He is a frequent contributor to Slate magazine on issues of race, politics, and culture, and lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and son.
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