My partner and I were chosen for our research project because of our wildlife backgrounds.

Yes, the research would entail heavily of physics and advanced calculus. And use of those new machines, called computers. But they could teach us all that. Take wildlifers, and make physicists out of them. The profs running the show were pretty certain they could never take physicists and teach them the wildlife biology and outdoors knowledge they would need.

And so there we were, the two oddballs in the classes loaded with mathematics whizzes, slide rule geeks (although I was partly a slide rule geek on my own) and health safety workers. And when the instructor needed a knife to collect a soil sample, he knew who would have one in their pocket.

The physics of radiation decay. Understanding and calculating the decays used in carbon dating. Creating gold through the modern alchemy of neutron bombardment.

And health physics. Studying the penetrative interactions of high-energy subatomic particles and ordinary matter.

Like glass, modern plastics. Atmosphere and varying densities, and water. Human tissue. Learning how a stray iron nucleus, stripped of electrons after billions of years of zipping around the galaxy, could slam into and through an astronaut's space helmet. After slamming through the wall of his space craft.

No idle word problem, this. Really did happen. Probably common at that point.

All detailed analyses and training that were rarely given. Offered in only a few colleges in the country, usually small postgraduate classes. Not many instructors with the experience or knowledge out there.

Providing trained graduates in a new, unique field. A field that NASA needed.

Badly, if you could believe the recruiter they sent to speak to our class. Not to become astronauts, but a new job they were developing.

"Mission Specialist".

And there he was, as clear as if he was on a poster with a finger pointed at my head:

"We want You."

One gal of the small class filled the application, went for the interviews. And came back dejected. Her vision didn't meet their standards.

Have no idea what those standards were, but I knew my eyesight was well below the norm. Almost certainly worse than hers. So I never applied. Never knew if I had the right stuff.

Who knows how my life may have turned out? If I could have made the grade?

If I might have ended up becoming a *shudder*, Texan?

But others were not so hesitant. Either blessed with better eyes, or greater determination. From across the country, across the world. Feeling that pull that so many of us feel, to leave this home and go someplace entirely new. But a pull of such strength that it could not be ignored. To place the expansion of humanity, its development into something more than just the dominant biped of this round rock, above one's own personal life.

A chance to leave this Earth, to look down upon the clouds, and almost all of human existance.

A few made those choices. And were found to have the right stuff.

We lost seven of those people yesterday.

And are all the lesser for it.