Space Exploration 

For generations, my family has been astronauts. My father was an astronaut just like my grandfather. Today was the day that I would follow in my Grandfather and my father's footsteps and go into orbit. I was finally going to graduate from astronaut school, we spent one year going through rigorous training and preparing to go to Mars. For years I watched my father tirelessly try to work on a remote-controlled rover to send to space. There were many failures along the way but finally after many years of hard and sleepless nights he invented the first rover that was sent to Mars. 

My goal as a kid was to be a part of the first crew to land on Mars, I wanted to pick up right where my dad left off. I picked up the picture of my and my father on my counter and thought of that miserable day. My father had died in orbit on his way to mars, his crew was hit by space debris. The debris hit the front of the rocket ship and sucked all of them out, they eventually suffocated from the lack of oxygen. I was in art class drawing a rocket ship for my end of semester project. The phone rang and the teacher looked at me, as soon as she did I knew something was wrong from her facial expression. I cried for weeks and weeks thinking of how my father died a sad death. 

I set the picture back on the counter and wiped the tears off of my face and got up to take a shower and wash my teeth. After 30 minutes, I heard knocking at the door and it was Dave, my best friend. We both shared the dream of being part of the crew that finally landed on mars. “Hurry up we’re going to be late”, Dave said. “Hold up, let me find my phone”, I replied. 

As I was closing the door to my apartment I took one more look at the picture of my father for a couple of seconds and then I closed the door. Dave and I sprinted down the hall and got into the elevator and pressed the first-floor button. Once we were out of our apartment we ran towards my car, I turned the car on and drove as fast as I could without going over the speed limit. We had 15 minutes before they were going to announce the crew. We arrived at the center with 5 minutes to spare, we walked towards the building and walked towards our designated meeting area. We found a teacher and we asked him when the announcement was going to start. “ It’s about to start, you made it just in time”, the proctor said. We walked over to the stage along with the proctor and sat down with 3 other astronauts.  “ I present to you the next handful of men and women that will go to mars”, the proctor said into the microphone.

When the proctor was done introducing us we took a group picture and the proctor shook all of our hands and congratulated us for completing the training. I was the last in line and he shook my hand and said, “ Jack, you will finally be able to pick up where your father left off, he would be proud of you right now”.  “I hope I make a big difference just like my father did”, I said. We were brought into another room and we were shown our spacecraft, the rocket ship we would use to fly to Mars. We were going to enter orbit with a veteran astronaut who had gone into orbit three times, His name was Boris Shift and he was going to be the one steering the rocket ship. Next, we went into a room and we were shown the suits we were going to be wearing. The suits were very different from what comes to mind when someone thinks of an astronaut suit. These suits looked like a white onesie and the helmet looked like a power ranger helmet. Before we put on our suits we had the opportunity to use the restroom, after everyone entered the room we put on these maximum absorbency garment adult sized-diapers. These diapers were for us to use during liftoff, landing, and extra-vehicular activity, These diapers have extra absorption material and they absorb urine and feces. 

After we got suited up we got into a black Cadillac and we were on our way towards the launching site. Once arriving there were a lot of news reporters along with the families of all of the crew. After answering a few questions we got into walking onto the platform and we entered the spaceship.