Member-only story
I was a nerdy kid.
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I loved science-fiction movies and everything about the space race. I kept scrapbooks of anything to do with American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. I openly admired the Russians as much as the Americans, an affection which had some kids calling me a communist. But I didn’t care. I even had a secret crush on Valentina Tereshkova, the first and youngest woman cosmonaut to go into space in June 1963. She was only 26.
By contrast, Ham the Monkey was only 4 years old when he blasted off into space in 1961 and Laika, the stray mongrel dog scooped from the streets of Moscow, was only three when she launched into orbit in November 1957.
At school, my ‘show and tell’ presentations, science fairs, and term projects were nothing more than an excuse for me to demonstrate my admiration and knowledge of man’s space exploration. So it was no wonder that at the end of Grade 8, my classmates voted me as the most likely kid to get to Mars.
Their confidence shaped my subject choices in high school: Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Math as well as English and History. Knowing that anyone going to Mars would have to be prepared for a long trip, I thought it would help to have a few other subjects in my back pocket. After all, it was likely that there would be periods where there’d be nothing more to do than stare out the window and have lengthy…
