Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Spring 2020 40 I GAZED OUT AT EARTH FROM THE WINDOW OF THE MIR SPACE STATION – AND IT WAS BETTER THAN ANYTHING I COULD HAVE IMAGINED W hen you talk to astronauts my age they can all tell you exactly where they were when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the Moon. I was 10, growing up in Southern California, and I remember lying on the floor watching the old black-and-white television and I thought, 'at's it. at's what I want to do.' I grew up in a military family – my mother's father and my own father were both naval aviators – and I thought about that as I pondered which path to take, because a lot of astronauts had similar backgrounds. I figured I'd follow the family tradition and go to naval academy and learn how to fly. I was a helicopter pilot in the Navy, got a master's degree and then after about 11 years I felt that I might have enough qualifications to be a competitive NASA candidate, but I really didn't feel like I would get selected. I was very pleasantly surprised when I was! After several years of training I was excited to finally have the opportunity to climb on board the rocket. During training we'd had lots of time in the motion simulator practising both launch and landing procedures, and I thought I had an idea of what launch might feel like. e fact is, though, it's incredibly difficult to put into words what 6.5 million pounds of thrust feels like. When the two solid rocket boosters ignite it literally feels like someone's put you in the world's largest sling-shot and let go. After eight minutes the engines shut off, your arms start to float because you're now weightless as you orbit the Earth, and that first view out the window, even though you've seen many, many pictures of the Earth from space as part of the training, it's an emotional moment. I could have looked out that window for the whole mission, but obviously, we had work to do. e second time I went back, in 1997, I was on board the space shuttle Atlantis as part of what was the seventh docking mission to the Russian space station, Mir. Docking is a pretty unique experience. When you first start the rendezvous process you can't even see POSTCARD

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