Timmy has no intention of going on the trip. He has never been on a sightseeing tour before and according to him, he is never going on one, end of discussion. Who wants to see...

Isn’t antimatter what fuels the U.S.S.Enterprise?

The earth is a spaceship. While you are here, enjoy the ride.

Why fly in a space ship when you can just park it in my driveway? I’ll even move my tricycle to the bathtub, to heighten your showering experience. Who says I’m not romantic?

They’ve got more stuff. And if your spaceship is broken, they can probably fix it better.

Ah, youth!It was a beautiful night…The moon was out of orbit.The stars were awry.But everything else was exactlyas it should have been.

This was exactly what I experienced in space: immense gratitude for the opportunity to see Earth from this vantage, and for the gift of the planet we’ve been given.

And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space.

At this point I thought ‘We made it,’ by which I meant ‘We survived.’ I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true.

True, beneath the human façade, I was an interloper, an alien whose ship had crashed beyond hope of repair in the backwoods of Southern Appalachia—but at least I’d learned to walk and talk enough like...