s*x ON THE MOON - THE AMAZING TRUE STORY

Chepter one Five Years Earlier, February 1997 There was something vaguely menacing about the folders. Off-white and three-ringed, row upon row, rising up the skyscraper-like corrugated-metal shelving units that obscured all four walls of the cramped, nearly windowless first-floor room. It wasn’t the folders’ color that was the problem, exactly; a shade that couldn’t be found in nature, even in a place as abundantly natural as Salt Lake City, Utah. Nor was it the black block lettering that ran up the spine of each folder, declaring the contents in language a third grader could understand. It was the idea behind the manila metropolis itself. What the folders represented: a literal way station on the search for the meaning of life. Maybe not the meaning of life—but certainly its direction. Thad Roberts stood in front of one of the towering shelving units, his hands nervously jammed into the deep pockets of his green, oversized Windbreaker. His windswept, free-form mop of light brown hair cast tangled shadows down across his high cheekbones. He supposed that such a room existed in cities all over the country—maybe all over the world. Probably every university campus had a place like this. No doubt, many were more glamorous than the rectangular, folder-filled box that was the career center of the University of Utah, but the essence of the place was quite probably duplicated all over the globe. A mildly terrifying place where lost souls gathered to seek a future, or at least the sort of future that could be summed up between the covers of a shiny three-ring folder. It was barely ten minutes past seven in the evening, but Thad was already swaying in his mud-scuffed T imberland boots as he surveyed the shelves, for what had to be the hundredth time. He had been in the career center two hours already, and by now he was approaching the damn folders almost at random. He’d pulled a half dozen of the folders off the shelves, piling them on one of the small wooden desks that lined the interior of the room behind him: Financial Adviser, Geologist, Air Traffic Controller, Physical Therapist. None of the choices sang to him, and he was truly close to the breaking point. He was fighting the urge to start sweeping the rest of the folders off the shelves with both hands. Close his eyes, make do with whatever landed on top of the pile. Roll the dice, get a life. He blinked, hard, trying to push the bleariness out of his normally brightly lit, citrine-green eyes. Or maybe it was time to just give up. He’d been at this way too long. And he wasn’t any closer to figuring out what he was going to do with himself. At twenty, he was drowning in student debt, even though he hadn’t even fully graduated from the university, leaving early to take on multiple jobs just to survive. That day, he’d been up since four A .M ., spending most of the past fifteen hours running around a backwoods construction site, basically a glorified gofer. He had about three hundred dollars in his bank account: the Windbreaker and boots he was wearing were three years old, and the shirt beneath his Windbreaker was held together by multiple assaults with a needle and thread, courtesy of Sonya, his beautiful but equally broke wife. He had no money, and certainly no safety net: he hadn’t spoken to his parents in more than a year, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to speak to them ever again. In fact, by their own admission, Thad didn’t really have parents anymore. Instead, what he had was in front of him, a skyscraper-high bookshelf lined with three-ring folders. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. He’d always been a stellar student, acing courses in everything from business to philosophy. While he was growing up, everyone had always told him how smart he was, and though some bad breaks had derailed him, he knew that he had the capability to learn. Wasn’t that supposed to be the most important thing? He pushed the hair away from in front of his eyes and turned back toward the very first row of folders. As tired as he felt, he decided he would start over and go through them all again. To his surprise, almost immediately one of the labels caught his eye, about five folders in from the beginning of the shelf. It was a folder Thad had paused at when he’d first walked into the career center, but he hadn’t yet pulled it out. He’d discounted it before, because he’d thought it was ridiculous, and probably way out of his reach. But now, a couple of hours later, his inhibitions were dwindling. He reached for the folder and reread the block letters. ASTRONAUT. That there was even a job folder for such a career seemed improbable. Thad had initially skipped over it because he was pretty sure you had to be in the air force to even consider being an astronaut —but at this point, he figured it couldn’t hurt to look. After all, he did love the sky. One of the first things he’d done when he’d arrived at the U of U was to visit the school’s observatory, and he’d dropped by the small hilltop facility a few times since, usually when he needed space to think. Literally. He began to leaf through the folder. To his surprise, it was divided into two parts: Pilots and Mission Specialists. The pilots were almost exclusively military, because they were the ones who flew the equipment. But the mission specialists could come from a variety of fields. These were the people who got their feet dirty, who went out into the different environments and conducted experiments. Thad figured that during moon landings, the two guys who walked around hitting golf balls were mission specialists. The guy who stayed behind in the spacecraft was the pilot. Thad wondered how jealous that would make you, going all the way to the moon but never getting to step outside. If Thad were an astronaut, he wanted to be the guy who walked on the moon. As he read deeper into the file, he felt his mind snapping into focus. He realized right away that if he really was going to do this—and it was a crazy thought, but still—he’d have to go back to school. He’d have to get a degree in something that NASA would be interested in. Biology, astrophysics, maybe geology. He would also have to gain expertise in a variety of other endeavors. Scuba, because the astronauts trained underwater. Languages, because space was international now, and there would be plenty of exchanges of people and machinery. A pilot’s license—even though he wouldn’t be able to compete with the military kids, he’d need to know how to fly. It all seemed so fascinating, so romantic. Growing up, he’d never really dreamed about the stars—he was too young to remember anything significant about the first steps on the moon. But he was instantly engaged by the idea because it seemed to fit him in so many ways. He was a dreamer, but he knew how to get dirty. He wanted to learn all these things—scuba, flying, Russian—and here was a reason to do it all. s**t, who wouldn’t want to walk on the moon? Of course, there was very little about the moon in the folder. The few articles about NASA’s current state seemed much more organized around another destination altogether: Mars. NASA scientists were hoping to one day launch an effort similar to the ’69 moon landing to try to get to Mars. Thad wondered what it would be like to be an astronaut on that mission. To have a chance to be the first person someplace new, someplace untouched. Someplace far away from Utah. To be the first man on Mars. Thad suddenly realized he wasn’t nervous anymore. … Legs furiously pumping, the pedals a near blur beneath his feet, his body leaning all the way forward over the handlebars, the frigid air tearing at his bare cheeks and forehead, Thad was moving so fast he could barely see the pavement flashing beneath him. He kept his eyes focused on the cone of orange light spitting out of the little headlamp attached to the front of the bike, ignoring the trees flashing by on either side, the flicker from windows hidden deep between the leaves. He took the last hill at top speed, the rubber tires skidding briefly against the iced road, and then the orange cone flashed against gravel—the driveway that led up to his rented single-bedroom home. He hit the brakes a second too late, but he was still able to take the gravel, his back tire jerking side to side. A moment later, he was clear of the bike, his boots hitting the grass of his front lawn. The house was little more than a shack, but Sonya was waiting on the front porch, her beautiful reddish-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and her white sweater tight against her curves. Thad ran up to her and held his hands out. She grinned, pulling the bottom of her sweater up to reveal the flat plane of her toned stomach. Then she took his hands and pressed them against her warm skin, shivering as she did so. It was a cute little ritual they had developed over the past few months of living together. Maybe it was stupid and maybe it was sweet, but Thad was certain he’d remember these moments for the rest of his life. A minute after that and they were inside. The living room was pretty bare: a few pieces of wooden furniture they had picked up at yard sales, a TV that was almost never on, a freestanding radiator that spat arcs of hissing water when it was turned too high. Thad led his wife to the couch by the TV and, sitting beside her, told her that he wanted to be an astronaut. He explained in detail what that meant, the things he would need to do and what they would have to reconfigure to make those things possible. It was going to take sacrifice, on both their parts. Sonya already had a full-time job as a dental assistant, and she had just started modeling in the evenings, had even signed with a local agency. But this would mean he would have to start school again, and take scuba and flying lessons. He would have to fill his résumé with the things that would impress scientists at NASA. It wasn’t going to be easy. “You want to be an astronaut,” Sonya repeated, looking at him. He half expected her to burst out laughing. Instead, she ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Cool. I guess I’m going to need to get another job.”