This is the 9th and next to last blog I’ll write surrounding my inaugural spaceflight, which took place as a research and training mission that flew last week on Virgin Galactic. Here, I want to close the loop for you on the things I said I was so highly anticipating knowing once I had flown; I published that list in my 6th blog in this series, called “Anticipation.” So, here’s that list again, this time with answers about how each question turned out.

On Thursday I flew to space, and what a ride it was! From the hurtling ascent, to the jam-packed 3 minutes of otherworldly microgravity to get our real work done, to the washboard deceleration of entry, and then the steep glide to a greased landing, it was simultaneously thrilling, fulfilling, and enchanting. And, there’s no contest, it was the single best work day I have ever had!

My reflections for today, launch day, are on risk and reward. In my view, both are integral parts of what it means to be human. Risk and reward are also sides of a single coin comes up in so many ways across the days of our lives. Like the risks of a one-shot flyby of Pluto that the New Horizons team pulled off so successfully, and the submersible journey I took to the Titanic, tomorrow’s expedition will be risky. But it will also full of promise.

It’s just T-6 days to launch on my first space mission, which is set for liftoff on Thursday, November 2nd from Spaceport America in southern New Mexico. Spaceport America is Virgin Galactic’s operations base for commercial suborbital missions. My blog today is about training for this mission. Unlike space tourists, those of us going to do research in space are there to work, and that means a whole different level of training than is needed just to ride aboard the vehicle as it goes through its flight paces. Most of that additional training is to ensure we’ll be ready to get our work done in the compressed timeline of just minutes during the actual spaceflight altitude portions of the mission.

As I write this blog, I’m about to leave on a business trip to Boston, to lead a science team meeting of the NASA New Horizons mission, which I serve as Principal Investigator (PI) for. The meeting is a typical business trip, one of over a 1000 that I’ve made in my career. My next business trip is as usual replete with admin assistance, travel reimbursement rules, and a post-trip expense report to file. But despite all that, it isn’t a routine trip at all.

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