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commander, were the target of the majority of their questions, but Ross would divert a question to another member of the crew if it was more applicable to their task while in flight. Ross believed it was important for the media to understand that all members of a crew are equally important to the success of a mission, and they deserved as much of the spotlight as he and the mission commander. It was just one more aspect of his leadership abilities that had caught the attention of the senior staff at NASA.
    Four days before the launch a new experience awaited Ross at Cape Canaveral, as the mission commander had asked him to come along on a short walk. The two men were not alone during the walk, as a few NASA technicians were also close at hand, but Ross knew very few others had been invited to take such a stroll. They walked along side, or sometimes behind, the giant crawler platform that moved the shuttle at a painfully slow pace out to the launch site. The wide road that leads from the VAB, or Vehicle Assembly Building, towards the two different shuttle launch pads is a few miles in length, and the journey takes the crawler several hours to complete. After a few hundred yards of the up close view, Ross and his commander had seen enough. They headed back inside the VAB as there were many other tasks to be tended to, and time was growing short.
    Ross rubbed the emblem on his necklace one more time for good luck before being helped into his spacesuit, and had a quiet moment of thought with Grandpa Hank. A short time later a few technicians strapped the crew down tightly into their seats and Ross was grateful for the assistance. With the shuttle in a vertical position for launch, he thought the most difficult aspect of a mission was climbing into a seat that would have him on his back while wearing a spacesuit that was extremely cumbersome in full Earth gravity.
    With a thumbs-up from each member of the crew, the hatch was sealed, the countdown was called out, and the shuttle began to vibrate as the attached rocket engines came to life. Slowly at first, and then with ever increasing velocity, the shuttle Atlantis tore away from Earth’s gravity. All systems were working according to specifications as they climbed higher and higher into the sky, and then the sky around them turned black as they entered space.
    Three of the members of this six person crew were first-timers into space, while Ross was the only one who was on his second voyage. One mission specialist in the back seat was on his third ride, and Ross would help him with the spacewalk he was due to take in a few days. The mission commander was on his fourth, and by his own admission last, ride into space. He was ready to become an instructor for the younger generation of astronauts that was coming up, but had earned the right to command a mission before doing so.
    The five days of the mission were extremely successful, and Ross flew the shuttle through the fireball of re-entry to a perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. This time at “wheels stop” he closed the official transmission of the flight with a sentiment of, “Man this thing is fun to fly”, which got a laugh from those seated around him.
    Throughout the debriefing process of the flight, each member of the crew had praise for Ross and how helpful he was with their respective challenges while in space. They all had experiments to complete, or spacewalks to perform, but all the training in the world was no substitute for someone who had actually been there to do it. The mission commander had also privately informed the senior NASA staff that he believed Ross was a natural to someday command a future mission. Ross was unaware that the endorsement had just moved him to the top of what had already become a very short list.
    After some well-deserved vacation time with Patty and their two little girls, Ross returned to work at NASA. The shuttle program was beginning to move along nicely, and