Into the Unknown

This is it! I think to myself as I'm getting my suit on. I am finally able to turn my dream into a reality. Mom used to be so proud of me every time I would show her my drawings of being an astronaut. She would put every one of them in her scrapbook. It still amazes me to this day how supportive she was. I'm thankful for that nowadays. She was my inspiration for doing what I did. Sometimes I would make her a drawing just to get a hug from her. She would tell me that it was worth it, but not necessary. She was always the best to me. Mainly because of the fact that I was an only child.

Once I'm done preparing, I head up to the boarding station. There I meet with the crew that I will be spending the next 3 months with. We have already met so now we just skim through a refresher, so that we have and understanding of exactly what we're doing. We all read through our notes to make sure we have everything down.

After we do that, we go up to the bridge to load up. I look at the surroundings to see how far up we are. "I would hate to fall from this height." I say to the team. "Well you're always told not to look down when going across this. Now you know why. How do you feel?" Jack asks with a smirk. "Ask me that in 5 minutes." I say jokingly. I hide the fact that I'm scared out of my mind. "Now's not the time to be getting cold feet you know." He says noticing that I'm worried. " Yeah, it'll fade out." I say lying to myself. He laughs. "Keep telling yourself that, and let us know when you start believing it." They all start laughing.

One by one, we start boarding the nose cone. The door is very small, so it's a good thing that all of us are about average body sizes. I get in and everything is exactly like it is in the movies. The seats make you face upwards. Which is because of the force that you're going up in. It would crush you if you were sitting up when it launches. Something else that I notice is that it only has enough room for three people. That is something that we learned in training. I go over to an available seat and buckle up. "Well good, you did learn something in the training." Jack says, trying to make me laugh. "Haha very funny." I say as I start the prelaunch process. "Do you remember how to do all of that?" Adam asks, attempting to help me. "Yes sir, I do. Thanks though." I say confidently. "You could go get me a lemonade though." I say laughing. They start laughing with me.

Over the intercom, we hear the countdown start. "Here we go guys get ready. This is what we have trained for months to do." Jack says energetically. I take a few deep breathes and try to relax. "Hang tight. This is going to be a blast." Adam says, making all of us chuckle. "5...4...3...2...1...BLAST OFF" The moment they say that, we feel the rocket come off the ground and go up towards the sky. "Woohoo!!!!" we all say in excitement. "You're going into space rookie, how does that feel." Jack asks. "It's a rush for sure." I say unable to hold the excitement. "Wait until we get out of the Earth's atmosphere. You'll love that for sure." Jack shouts. "We just few a few minutes before we are out of the atmosphere. Get ready for it. It's a wild ride." Adam announces. A few minutes later, I feel myself get lighter. "Well you did it rookie. You are now in outer space." Jack informs me.