With hard work, an immigrant’s dream of spaceflight came true. Now, his ticket to America could be our ticket to the Red Planet. Like many red-blooded American teens coming of age during the 1960s space race, Franklin Chang-Diaz dreamed of chasing cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin to the stars.
There was a hitch, of course. Chang-Diaz wasn’t American. He lived outside the United States. And the Costa Rican didn’t even speak English.
No matter. Chang-Diaz would overcome these obstacles and more to fly a record-tying seven missions aboard the space shuttle. Along the way the physicist would also develop a plasma rocket that promises a revolutionary approach to spaceflight.
The rocket, potentially, could blast the next generation of astronauts to Mars in just 39 days, about one fifth of the time required by existing rocketry.