Throwing up is never pleasant.  Imagine what it would be like in weightlessness. Two thirds of space travelers have some form of motion sickness, ranging from dizziness to nausea to vomiting.  It might have been present in the early days of spaceflight, but it became more apparent with the Space Shuttle. From sitting on the launch pad to being weightless took eight and a half minutes.  Unlike astronauts who flew in cramped capsules, Shuttle...

“Writers are the custodians of memory, and memories have a way of dying with their owner.” William Zinsser wrote that in his book, Writing About Your Life: A Journey into the Past. That was a good reason to proceed with my book. It reminded me that my memories are uniquely my own, and they can’t accurately be told by a ghost writer, no matter how talented. Consider the recent book Sally Ride: America’s First Woman in Space,...