(Potty) Training Your Astronaut

(Potty) Training Your Astronaut

Potty training is never easy for children – or adults planning to go into space. I had been an astronaut for four years and married for a little over a year when our first child, Paul, was born in July of 1982.    My first Space Shuttle flight was slated for early 1985. As every mother knows, two year olds can be a challenge.  Paul was in the throes of the “terrible twos” but, otherwise, he was a wonderful little boy.  Then there was the potty...

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Devious Minds

Devious Minds

Launch countdown was proceeding well. We tightened our seatbelts and stared upward. We had been waiting for this moment. The engines lit, the boosters ignited, and we were on our way up, up, up! Seconds later, an alarm. We had a failure of one of our three fuel cells. The pilot (PLT) looked at the computer screen and called out to us and Mission Control that it was fuel cell 2. The ground controllers, the flight commander (CDR), and our flight...

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Birthing a Book

Birthing a Book

“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,...

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