“What made you want to be a rocket scientist?” I ask. “Wow, hard question,” he says with a small laugh. “I can’t remember a time I didn’t want to design rockets. It’s like an immutable law of the universe—I want to understand everything there is to know about engineering and physics so I can make something that can go where I never will. I want to leave my mark in the stars. I want to be a footnote in history in the distant future when they’re talking about how we got to the point of colonizing other planets. I want to be part of something so much bigger than me.”
