Imagine flying like Superwoman. You could in space. In fact, you MUST fly everywhere. Walking or swimming is not an option. An astronaut learns fast on that first flight the power of a gentle push. Shove off as you learned to do in the swimming pool, and you will crash against your target with no way to slow down along the way. “Whoooaaa!” is a frequent call heard from the weightless rookie on the first day in space. The preferred technique?...

Shuttle launches were always special. We were friends helping friends get ready for great adventures. Hoot had landed safely from his second mission, and I was in training for my next one. The space program was gearing up for a year of many spectacular launches. It was full speed ahead. Not that there hadn’t been problems. On Hoot’s recent mission, there had been many glitches. On one launch attempt a brave engineer had stopped the countdown...

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...

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...

Storms are a reminder of the majesty and fearsomeness of nature. Like many small children, I was afraid of thunder. I’d cling to my parents, screaming when lightning started. One morning before dawn a storm came up, and I ran crying to my parents’ bed. My father was tired of the fussing, so he scooped me up and took me out to our covered back porch. There we sat as the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed. After a while my terror subsided...