But what would it be to cast out into space creations that had no eyes to see it and no heart to fear or exult in it? For years an astronaut trains in pools and caves and submarines and simulators, every flaw or weakness located, tested and winnowed away until what’s left is a near-perfect unflappable triangulation of brain, limbs and senses. For some it comes hard and for others more easily. For Pietro, more easily; he is a natural-born astronaut, he has an equilibrium that has been there since childhood, an extraordinary ease and presence of mind that made him bypass most of the
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