Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

by Mike Massimino

There are emergency placards and safety signs all over the interior of the shuttle, telling you what to do and where to go. That stuff is there to give you something to read before you die.

Every astronaut class gets a nickname. The original Mercury guys were “the Original Seven,” and the second group of nine were called, rather imaginatively, “the New Nine.” Once the shuttle era came, the names got more creative: the Maggots, the Hairballs, the Flying Escargot.

My body was built to be a spacewalker. My mind, on the other hand, needed some work.