Monday morning, January 16, 1978 was like any other in the life of a surgical resident at the VA Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. The final six months of my training were dragging on. There were patients to admit, cases to do, rounds to make, and lectures to attend. My future after that June was uncertain. My pager went off: a phone call was awaiting for me at the front desk. “For you, Dr. Seddon,” said the operator. In each life there are...

In this holiday season, we all remember Christmases past—the best present ever received or the most perfect gift ever given. In 1968, a miracle happened that made it my most memorable. In 1968, President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade and returning him home safely seemed unachievable. The U.S. space program was recovering from that terrible 1967 Apollo 1 fire which had taken the lives of three...

Friday, December 5, 2014: I watched the countdown to the perfect launch of Orion, the first test flight of a capsule that may someday take humans to Mars. It brought back memories of the glory days of NASA. Grand events like that take careful advance planning, a team of skilled and enthusiastic people, and the perfect base of operations. Oh yeah, cooperative weather, as well. Afterwards, I baked two almond chicken casseroles. It was also the...

Squish! A giant blob of strawberry fruit punch splatted against the ceiling. Darn! It had crawled out the straw in my drink container. As I reached to clean it up, spaghetti floated off my spoon. If that wasn’t weird enough, a tortilla suddenly whizzed like a flying saucer by my head. Mealtime in space was always entertaining. When I began work at NASA in 1978, one of my first assignments as an Astronaut was to represent our office in decisions...

What would it be like to have a job where your employer wants to keep you healthy and is willing to pay to ensure it? Being an astronaut was like that. November is my birthday month which means it’s time to go to Houston for my annual physical exam. NASA likes to keep track of any health effects of spaceflight, so I am invited back each year to be tested. I applied for the program in 1977 and went to the Johnson Space Center for a week of...