Thrusters Quotes

Have you noticed All the moments we live And all the miles we walk never seem to get us anywhere but dead? but still... the flare of my thrusters burns like tiny suns In the sea of starlight all around her. when the light that kisses the back of her eyes was birthed, her ancestors were not yet born. How many human lives have ended in the time it took that light to reach her? how many people have loved only to have lost? how countless, the hopes that have died? [But still...] Not this one.

Hey,” Watney said over the radio, “I've got an idea.” “Of course you do,” Lewis said. “What do you got?” “I could find something sharp in here and poke a hole in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily.” “How does he come up with this shit?” Martinez interjected. “Hmm,” Lewis said. “Could you get 42 meters per second that way?” “No idea,” Watney said. “I can't see you having any control if you did that,” Lewis said. “You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control.” “I admit it's fatally dangerous,” Watney said. “But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man.” “We'll keep working on ideas,” Lewis said. “Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.

To the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with. You and your fluctuating metabolism, your puny memory, your frame that comes in a million different configurations. You are unpredictable. You're inconstant. You take weeks to fix. The engineer must worry about the water and oxygen and food you'll need in space, about how much extra fuel it will take to launch your shrimp cocktail and irradiated beef tacos. A solar cell or a thruster nozzle is stable and undemanding. It does not excrete or panic or fall in love with the mission commander. It has no ego. Its structural elements don't start to break down without gravity, and it works just fine without sleep. To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing.

In case you haven't noticed, they're moving a lot faster. I don't know about the laws of physics on your planet, but where I come from an object moving at subclass speed can't catch up to one running at starclass. But if you know something about turbines, thrusters and engines, quantum or classical physics that I've somehow missed, then please enlighten me. - Caillen Dagan to Desideria Denarii

Love is like a wormhole. You stumble on to it blindly, it sucks you in and takes you somewhere completely unexpected. You can’t fight it, because that would tear your ship apart. You can’t control it, either. All you can do is set your thrusters on glide and let it take you where it's going to take you.

For a really smart person, Felicity, sometimes you’re really dumb.

They lay in silence, strapped to their couches and ready for launch. Beck looked at Watney’s empty couch and saw Vogel doing the same. Martinez ran a self-check on the nose cone OMS thrusters. They were no longer safe for use. He noted the malfunction in his log.

Into the cargo room. Down the ramp of the hatch door, into the brightness of day. They’d barely stepped off of it when squeals pierced the air and the slab of metal began to close. Alec lifted the Berg off the ground, blue thrusters roaring. Mark was barely holding onto his mind, but he felt a sudden, unbearable sadness. He’d never see the old bear again.

Prepare your thrusters.

whenever something goes to hell everywhere else in the country, Florida puts it on roller skates with rocket thrusters.

Alec lifted the Berg off the ground, blue thrusters roaring. Mark was barely holding on to his mind, but he felt a sudden, unbearable sadness. He'd never see the old bear again.

The Luna-Ganymede Race went down in history, and the magnetic sail went down to the fusion thruster. Terranova should never have taken the bet, but it was a matter of pride - and prive loves loss above surrender.

Because it’s a fucking spider. Those fuckers are assholes. And they can kill. And there’s nothing normal about an animal that spins fucking yarn out its ass and catches other animals in its ass-yarn so it can fucking suck their blood out. That’s wrong.

The thrusters roared, and Jane was aware of how small she was – she and Laurian both. So small, so squishy. They’d strapped themselves into this explosive hunk of scrap and aimed for the sky. How was this a good idea? How had anyone ever thought this was a good idea?

Bet he’s got a huge dick too,” she said wistfully. Great. Now I was thinking about Nash and his incredible morning erections and how I might never get to experience one again. “Back to Duncan,” I said desperately. Tina waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, he just had a medium-sized one. Didn’t really know how to use it. He was kind of a poker instead of a thruster, if you know what I mean.

Those fuckers are assholes. And they can kill. And there’s nothing normal about an animal that spins fucking yarn out its ass and catches other animals in its ass-yarn so it can fucking suck their blood out. That’s wrong.

There's no reason to sound so relieved, Drago,' said Marlise. 'You're the only person here who's ever collided with a portal.' There was a sound of laughter, and Drago groaned. 'My lateral thrusters were out, and I couldn't exactly take is slowly given I'd got a whole pack of giant flying lizards chasing me.' 'That's another thing,' said Marlise. 'You were supposed to bring back a specimen for the scientists, but the idea was that it would be dead.

And so, nearly in sight of the capital of Ruthgar, they boarded the odd new skimmer that Ben-hadad had dubbed the Mighty Thruster. Kip had shaken his head. Tisis had muttered, "Boys." Ferkudi had guffawed. Winsen had grinned. Cruxer had blushed and said, "you can't call it that." "We're the Mighty," Ben-hadad said. "The propulsion units are thrusters, that's all". The damn liar. "i guess you'll be the first man to ride the Mighty Thruster?", tisis asked. His brown wrinkled. "That makes it sound..." "Make sure you take a good wide stance, legs apart, or he'll thrown you." "He? i didn't..." "Do you need more instruction? Because I'm getting quite adept at riding a mighty thruster myself," she said. Ben-hadad blanched. "You'll want to make sure you have a good grip, and loosen up your hips a--" "All right! All right!" Hours later, they sped into the mouth of the Great River -- on the good skimmer Blue Falcon

My son was something of a disciple of flying things. On his bedroom wall were posters of fighter planes and wild birds. A model of a helicopter was chandeliered to his ceiling. His birthday cake, which sat before me on the picnic table, was decorated with a picture of a rocket ship - a silver-white missile with discharging thrusters. I had been hoping that the baker would place a few stars in the frosting as well (the cake in the catalog was dotted with yellow candy sequins), but when I opened the box I found that they were missing. So this is what I did: as Joshua stood beneath the swing set, fishing for something in his pocket, I planted his birthday candles deep in the cake. I pushed them in until each wick was surrounded by only a shallow bracelet of wax. Then I called the children over from the swing set. They came, tearing up divots in the grass. We sang happy birthday as I held a match to the candles. Joshua closed his eyes. "Blow out the stars," I said, and his cheeks rounded with air.

dawned, even for her, that the end was here. Spots swam before Mark’s eyes, flashing lights. His heart wouldn’t stop racing, and it felt as if the organ pumped acid through his veins. Trina, silent, kept up with him. Into the cargo room. Down the ramp of the hatch door, into the brightness of day. They’d barely stepped off of it when squeals pierced the air and the slab of metal began to close. Alec lifted the Berg off the ground, blue thrusters roaring. Mark was barely holding onto his mind, but he

They’re just picking people off, left and right. Why are they using darts instead of bullets?” “Makes no sense,” Mark replied. “Can’t we do something?” Trina said, her body trembling with what looked like frustration more than fear. “Why are we letting these people do this?” Mark stepped up to Lana and peeked out with her. Bodies littered the clearing now, impaled darts sticking up toward the sky like a miniature forest. Still the Berg hovered overhead, its thrusters raging with blue heat. “Where are our security guys?” Mark whispered to no one in particular. “They take the day off or something?

Fly with those who lift you up and thrust you forward A pilot friend of mine told me there are four main principles to master when flying airplanes: lift, thrust, weight, and drag. You have to take all these into account to make sure the plane will fly. It struck me that these same principles apply to specific types of people. There are some who lift you, brighten your day, cheer you up, and make you feel better about yourself. You meet them and you have a spring in your step. They’re a lift. Then there are people who thrust you. They inspire you, motivate you, challenge you to move forward and pursue your dreams. The third group are weights. They pull you down, dump their problems on you, so that you leave feeling heavier, negative, discouraged, and worse than you did before. Finally, there are those who are a drag. They’ve always got a sad song. The dishwasher broke. The goldfish died. They didn’t get invited to a party. They’re stuck in a pit. They expect you to cheer them up, fix their problems, and carry their loads. We all encounter people from each of these four groups. You have to make sure you’re spending the majority of your time with lifters and thrusters. If you’re only hanging out with weights and drags, it will keep you from becoming everything you were created to be.

Hey," Watney said over the radio, "I've got an idea." "Of course you do," Lewis said. "What do you got?" "I could find something sharp in here and poke a hold in the glove of my EVA suit. I could use the escaping air as a thruster and fly my way to you. The source of the thrust would be on my arm, so I'd be able to direct it pretty easily." "How does he come up with this shit?" Martinez interjected. "Hmm," Lewis said. "Could you get forty-two meters per second that way?" "No idea," Watney said. "I can't see you having any control if you did that," Lewis said. "You'd be eyeballing the intercept and using a thrust vector you can barely control." "I admit it's fatally dangerous," Watney said. "But consider this: I'd get to fly around like Iron Man." "We'll keep working on ideas," Lewis said. "Iron Man, Commander. Iron Man.

Shouting didn't help. Kathy keyed her landing skids down and strangled the thruster grips onto full. A flagman on the ground dove sideways. The fighter whizzed past the man's prostrate body, her skids unfolding only feet above his head. She nearly beheaded three others as she scrambled to decrease power to her belly thrusters and fight spinning into a sideways slide. Suddenly a group of people came into view at the edge of the tarmac. “Oh shit!” She killed her belly thrusters completely. The skids hit the cement like a Boeing 747 with no tires. She slammed back into the seat. Metal screeched against cement. Everything shook like a jackhammer. The big Shimeron slued sideways then slammed her into her harness as it lurched to a halt. Every part of her including her hands shook. She took a deep breath and tried to calm her tremors enough to power down. “You did it, O’Donnell,” she said as the gyros whined down in a groan of sympathy. She removed her helmet and pushed back her flight suit hood only to have a pile of sopping wet sparkling hair flop out over her face. She swiped it away and released the canopy. A blast of cool ocean air filled the cockpit. Carefully, she peered over the side of the cockpit. Bodies lay strewn about on the ground. A few prostrate forms moved. Kathy sank down into the seat with a grimace. Great, you just killed your welcoming committee, you twit.

Vader let them close a bit, then slammed hard on the reverse thrusters, throwing him forward in his seat, and immediately reengaged the engines. The momentary stop had been enough. The escort streaked past and over him. He gave chase instantly, inverting the shuttle as he did.

Dad stops behind Felicity, larger than life even in his late sixties, his hair prayer than brown, the lines in his face getting deeper every day. He gives me a strangled sort of look. "I'm supposed to talk to you about where babies come from. Your mother says you were doing it wrong." Felicity has a sudden coughing fit that has Ares off his feet and across the room making sure the baby's okay before i can finish thinking fuck. "I told her she should've given you a few more minutes," dad adds. He clears his throat. "So the shed should be free tonight." Felicity's leaning against the wall, laughing so hard she's crying. Loki's gripping her around the head and patting her hair, his eyes huge and terrified, like female tears scare the shit out of him. Are's whole body is vibrating with silent laughter. Dad clears his throat again and nods to me. "So, practice good. You're welcome to stay here as long as you want.

He must be fucking amazing in bed. Can you imagine that kind of intensity staring into your eyes, into your soul, while he’s sliding that thick, hard cock deep inside your pussy, knowing when to go harder, when to go faster, when to grind and adjust, exactly how to touch your skin with his big hands, how hard to put the pressure on your clit, how you like to be pinned beneath his rock-hard body and the bed, without a word, just knowing because he knows what your breath means, what the pitch of your moans means, because he can detect the smallest shift in your gasp, understands exactly how badly you need him to grip your ass, to push your legs farther apart, to pin your arms over your head, to bite your nipples, to slam home, to find that secret spot deep inside, and hit it over and over and over again until he draws out an orgasm so deep, so hard, so exquisite that an entire supernova explodes in your ovaries and an intense pleasure you’ve never known makes your very aura leave your entire body? Holy fuck, I need a drink. And he’s still watching me. His gaze going darker. Like he knows.

She’s staring at me, which, yeah. Of course she is, because I’m babbling like a fucking fourteen-year-old girl swooning over fucking Prince Manning. But this is Fireball, and you never know what she might be thinking. So I cut a glance at her to see if it’s an I’m considering it stare or if it’s an I’m letting a loony bin drive me around on a golf cart stare, and—“Fuck!

My mother says honesty is the true mark of a person.” “If you can’t be a good example, be a warning.

Around us, the flashes flare like the thrusters of the good ship Prospero, sending my heart rocketing into the farthest reaches of this impossible universe.

Imagine a rocket ship on the launchpad. It takes a tremendous amount of force to propel such a vessel from the Earth’s surface to the outer reaches of its gravitational pull. But once in orbit, only the smallest force is required to guide that ship’s trajectory. You are the ship. Those with whom you surround yourself are the thrusters—powerful engines that can either detonate you upon ignition or propel you beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, releasing you with the self-propelling tools and habits required to pursue the interstellar landscape of your dreams.

Life’s too short to be a shithead—the cruel kind, not the take-care-of-yourself kind—and you never know who you’re going to need tomorrow

It was a few blocks away, hovering with no visible thrusters on. Dirt and leaves rose from the yards, creating a dust cloud beneath it.

The explosion At first the crew thought a meteoroid had hit them. As well as the noise of an explosion, the electrics were going haywire and the attitude control thrusters had fired. In fact, a short circuit had ignited some insulation in the Number 2 oxygen tank of the Service Module. The Service Module provided life support, power and other systems to the Command Module, which held the astronauts as they travelled to and from lunar orbit. The Lunar Module was a separate, though connected, craft that would be used to ferry the men to the lunar surface and back. The fire caused a surge in pressure that ruptured the tank, flooding the fuel cell bay with gaseous oxygen. This surge blew the bolts holding on the outer panel, which tore off free and spun into space, damaging a communications antenna. Contact with Earth was lost for 1.8 seconds, until the system automatically switched to another antenna. The shock also ruptured a line from the Number 1 oxygen tank. Two hours later all of the Service Module’s oxygen supply had leaked into the void. As the Command Module’s fuel cells used oxygen with hydrogen to generate electricity, it could now only run on battery power. The crew had no option but to shut down the Command Module completely and move into the Lunar Module. They would then use this as a ‘lifeboat’ for the journey back to Earth before rejoining the Command Module for re-entry. As for the mission, the Service Module was so badly damaged that a safe return from a lunar landing was impossible. These men would not be landing on the Moon. 320,000 km from home The Flight Director immediately aborted the mission. Now he just had to get the men home. The quickest way would be a Direct Abort trajectory, using the Service Module engine to essentially reverse the craft. But it was too late:

She knuckle shuffled her nubbin. And now I’m thinking of her digits on her skittle.

In one smooth motion, he lifts me up, goes flat on his back, and sits me on top of his face. On. Top. Of. His. Face.

The central processor, built by a different firm, was providing the input in newtons, the metric system measurement. Every time the processor said “X,” the thrusters heard “4.45 times X.

It will run on a SuperDraco engine—a thruster made by SpaceX and the first engine ever built completely by a 3-D printer to go into space.

Amos took a high-caliber automatic that fired self-propelled rounds, recoilless and designed for use in zero g. Old-fashioned slug throwers were more reliable, but in null gravity they were also maneuvering thrusters.

changes the performance of the propulsion system compared to other types of thrusters and modifies the conventional way of calculating some of the thruster parameters, such as specific impulse and efficiency

If we forget to give our measurements in units, or if we are not in agreement over which units we have both used to make our measurements, it is a recipe for disaster. For example, in 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter space probe was intended to orbit Mars at a low altitude while mapping its surface. It was known that the probe could not get closer than 80 kilometres from the Martian surface or atmospheric stresses would rip it apart. However, the probe actually came within 57 kilometres of the surface and did, indeed, disintegrate. The crash investigators found that the cause of the error was due to the flight system software calculating thrust in metric units, while the ground crew were entering thruster data using imperial measures.

Like the original concept, the stormrider had rectangular blades, sixteen of them radiating out from the hub, each one a flat lattice of struts twenty-five kilometers long, made from the toughest steelsilicon fibers the Commonwealth knew how to manufacture. Twenty-three kilometers of them were covered by an ultra-thin silvered foil, giving a total surface area of over one thousand eight hundred square kilometers for the solar wind to impact on. Even in an ordinary solar system environment that would have produced a considerable torque. In the Half Way system the stormrider was positioned at the Lagrange point between the red star and its neutron companion, right in the middle of the plasma current, where the ion density was orders of magnitude thicker than any normal solar wind. The power the stormrider produced when it was in the thick of the flow was enough to operate the wormhole generator. But it couldn’t simply sit at the Lagrange point producing electricity continuously; that would have been too much like perpetual motion. As the waves of plasma pushed against it, they exerted an unremitting pressure on the blades that blew the stormrider away from the Lagrange point out toward the neutron star. So for five hours the two sets of blades would turn in opposite directions, generating electricity for the Port Evergreen wormhole that was delivered via a zero-width wormhole. The stormrider also stored some of the power, so that at the end of the five hours when it was out of alignment, it had enough of a reserve to fire its onboard thrusters, moving itself even farther out of the main plasma stream where the pressure was reduced. From there it chased a simple fifteen-hour loop back around through open space to the Lagrange point, where the cycle would begin again.

As days turned into weeks and months became years, Anakin made the best of his time, learning all that he could about technology and interstellar travel. He studied the aliens who passed through Mos Espa and got to know the local merchants on a first-name basis. While sitting in junked starship cockpits, he learned to recognize the controls for thrusters, stabilizers, and repulsors. From watching other mechanics and pit droids, he became proficient at repairing Podracers at Watto’s shop.

You'd sleep better without the clothes." "You get ideas when I'm naked." "Darling Eve, I get ideas when you're wearing riot armor. All I'm after is a bit of sleep, I promise you." She wiggled out of the jeans, the shirt, then gave him a mock scowl when he slid in beside her, drew her against him. "Don't even think about engaging thrusters." "Quiet." He kissed the top of her head, snuggled her in. "Go to sleep.

You deserve to feel safe,” Addie repeats. “You get to take up space. You get to have needs. You deserve to be happy. And you do not ever, ever have to apologize for any of that, or minimize the bad things other people do to you.

You get to make mistakes and take up space and have needs and not be sorry for it,

I’m the guy who’s paying over a hundred grand for one more date with the last woman I let into my heart.

I can’t be good for anyone if I’m busy beating myself up for my mistakes instead of learning from them.

Honey, when you get to be my age, you have so many water bottles that you forget which ones have water and which ones have vodka in them.

The cluster was oriented so that it was pointing toward the sun; that way, boiloff of the cryogenic propellants inside the tanks was reduced. Shadows of struts and attitude thrusters lay long against the sunlit white-and-silver bellies of the fuel tanks. The booster’s underside was illuminated only by the soft blue and green of Earthlight. She could see the great flaps of the cluster’s solar panels, folded up against the sides of the MS-IVB stage like wings; the panels would be unfurled when Ares was safely launched on its trajectory to Mars. There was the bold red UNITED STATES stenciled against the side of the MS-II, and the finer lettering along the long thin protective flaps masking the solar panels, and the NASA logo; and she could make out the support struts and attachment pins which held the External Tanks in place against the flanks of the MS-II, and the gold-gleaming mouths of the MS-II’s four J-2S engines, upgrades of the engines which had pushed Apollo to the Moon. To assemble this much mass in Earth orbit had taken all of nine Saturn VB flights over the last five years—half of them manned. The booster stages and their tanks had been flown up and assembled more or less empty, and then pumped full of gas from tanker modules. The cluster was an exercise in enhanced Apollo-Saturn technology, of course, and the essence of its design went all the way back to the 1960s. But NASA had had to develop a raft of new techniques to achieve it: the assembly in orbit of heavy components, the long-term storage of supercold fuels, in-orbit fueling.

He makes a noise I can’t interpret but that vaguely reminds me of a movie I watched recently with a cranky billionaire hero who catches a strange woman waxing her beaver in one of his many mansions.

me something!” Scrambling to his feet in the darkness, Commander Korsin craned his neck to find the hologram. “Thrusters, attitude control—I’ll take parking jets!” A starship is a weapon, but it’s the crew that makes it deadly. An old spacer’s line: trite, but weighty enough to lend a little authority. Korsin had used it himself on occasion. But not today. His ship was being deadly all on its own—and his crew was just along for the ride.

The reason this UFO crashed was no different from youngsters (18 to 22 years of age) driving cars at excessive speeds on the 400 series highways in Canada or Interstate highways in the USA. The pilot and co-pilot who were young were not aware of the earth’s gravitational pull and it was too late to slow down when they reversed their thrusters so they crashed. Most of the craft was not seriously damaged but the collision caused havoc on board.

I’ll get yours,” Panther says to Bailey. He flashes a rare smile. “If you’ll promise to not hit me with that stick.” She puffs her chest up and shoves the hockey stick at Zeus. He shakes his head. “Keep it.” And then the big old goober pulls a Sharpie from his back pocket and flips it to me. “Sign that for her, Fireball. If she says please.” And once again, Zeus Berger has managed to take me by surprise. Dammit.

Not only was the ship large, the Fitzgerald was also safe; she featured a well-equipped pilot house with the best equipment available, and her three holds were divided by 21 steel watertight hatches.  In 1969, the company installed a bow thruster that improved the ship’s safety and maneuverability, and over the winter of 1971-72, she was modernized with oil burners to replace her coal-fired engines.

Brit: OH MY GOD. Tyler. It’s a woman, isn’t it? You’re dating someone! Who is she? What’s her name? When do we get to meet her? Are you bringing her home for Christmas? Is she a bunny, or is she someone else? Wait! Wait! Are you dating one of your teammates’ sisters? OH MY GOD. You’re dating the coach’s daughter and you’re trying to make a good impression, aren’t you? Tyler: *picture of a skinny white guy with big glasses* Haha! Psych. I stole this phone. This is me. I’m Bernard. You guys sound like fun. Will you adopt me? I’ll send you my real number. Dad: That’s a funny Grand Canyon of a vagina, Tyler, my favorite son, god of the sun and moon, he who bangs best. Dad: Grand Canyon of a vagina. Dad: WHO CHANGED MY PHONE TO INSULT YOUR YO-YO MA’S SEX TAPE? Dad: BEEEEEEEEEEEP. Keely: OMG, I’m wheezing. Allie: My favorite part of this is that Tyler’s going to get blamed for changing the autocorrect setting in Dad’s phone. Again. Brit: I can’t believe no one changed “joke” in his phone before now. Dad: I CAN STILL SEE YOUR MESSAGES.

Grip strength, how hard you can grip with your hands, which involves everything from your hands to your lats (the large muscles on your back). Almost all actions begin with the grip. Attention to both concentric and eccentric loading for all movements, meaning when our muscles are shortening (concentric) and when they are lengthening (eccentric). In other words, we need to be able to lift the weight up and put it back down, slowly and with control. Rucking down hills is a great way to work on eccentric strength, because it forces you to put on the “brakes.” Pulling motions, at all angles from overhead to in front of you, which also requires grip strength (e.g., pull-ups and rows). Hip-hinging movements, such as the deadlift and squat, but also step-ups, hip-thrusters, and countless single-leg variants of exercises that strengthen the legs, glutes, and lower back.

her soul and my soul fit like two puzzle pieces, and I’ve just been facing the wrong direction my entire life.

Or have I finally flipped?" It had happened to others his age. A man as old as Louis Wu must have seen impossible things happen again and again. For such a man, the line between fantasy and reality sometimes blurred. He might become ultra conservative, rejecting the impossible even after it had become fact . . . like Kragen Perel, who would not believe in the thruster drive because it violated the second law of motion. Or he might believe anything . . . like Zero Hale, who kept buying fake Slaver relics.

think

It was a Rube Goldberg contraption that someone had once said looked like a flying bedstead. The nickname had stuck. The Bedstead had a jet engine that pointed straight up, and hydrogen peroxide thrusters mounted at all angles on an ungainly aluminum frame.

When Martin analyzed the data—every transaction using a Canadian Tire credit card from the prior year—he discovered that what customers purchased was a remarkably precise predictor of their subsequent payment behavior when used in conjunction with traditional tools like income and credit history. A New York Times Magazine article entitled “What Does Your Credit Card Company Know about You?” described some of Martin’s most intriguing findings: “People who bought cheap, generic automotive oil were much more likely to miss a credit-card payment than someone who got the expensive, name-brand stuff. People who bought carbon-monoxide monitors for their homes or those little felt pads that stop chair legs from scratching the floor almost never missed payments. Anyone who purchased a chrome-skull car accessory or a ‘Mega Thruster Exhaust System’ was pretty likely to miss paying his bill eventually.

Fundamentally I structure my training around exercises that improve the following: Grip strength, how hard you can grip with your hands, which involves everything from your hands to your lats (the large muscles on your back). Almost all actions begin with the grip. Attention to both concentric and eccentric loading for all movements, meaning when our muscles are shortening (concentric) and when they are lengthening (eccentric). In other words, we need to be able to lift the weight up and put it back down, slowly and with control. Rucking down hills is a great way to work on eccentric strength, because it forces you to put on the “brakes.” Pulling motions, at all angles from overhead to in front of you, which also requires grip strength (e.g., pull-ups and rows). Hip-hinging movements, such as the deadlift and squat, but also step-ups, hip-thrusters, and countless single-leg variants of exercises that strengthen the legs, glutes, and lower back.

Chapter One Outside Buchanan School. 7:50 AM. Stupid ideas don’t seem so stupid when you’re about to go through with the stupid idea. Really stupid ideas shine brighter the second they enter your brain. Like, “Hey, man, you prob’ly shouldn’t do what you’re about to do!” I like to think of a field of kittens when that happens… makes it easier to ignore my common sense. Ahhhhh… field kittens. My name is Max… and I was about to do something really stupid. The air smelled of freshly cut grass as birds chirped from trees full of leaves. I took a deep breath as I stalled, hoping a meteor would crash into the planet so I wouldn’t have to go through with the thing. Kids just getting to school lined the sidewalk, curious about what was happening. I squeezed the handlebars of my bike, listening to the sound of tightening rubber under my fingers. “Max, you okay?” Beck, my best friend, said from somewhere. I didn’t know where exactly since fear was making everything blurry. I shook my head to clear the fog. “Never been better,” I said. “Are… are the thrusters working?” It took him a second to answer. “I’unno. I never tested ‘em.” I nodded bravely like a hero who was about to meet his maker. “Nice.” It became blazingly obvious that the world wasn’t going to end anytime over the next few seconds, which meant I was gonna have to perform the stunt that everyone was waiting to see. The stunt wasn’t anything crazy – just a kid jumping his bike over the bike rack filled with other bikes. In front of the bike rack was a cement lip that curved at the bottom, making a nice little ramp that everyone joked about jumping their bike off of. I was about to be the kid that did it. Easy enough, right? Well, my buddy, Beck, thought it’d be epic if I attached some thrusters to the back of my bike. No rocket fuel or flames – just a couple of cans of ultra-compressed air that would fire when I flipped the switch. It was a rig he built himself – that was kind of Beck’s specialty. Jumping the rack was a stunt that I’d been working on for weeks. I knew I wanted to do it because of all the kids who hadn’t done it before. And I was gonna nail it, and the whole school – no, the whole school district – no… the whole city was gonna talk about it when it was done.

Most significant, he’s been testing rockets that can push their payload to space and then return to Earth and land with supreme accuracy on a pad floating at sea or even their original launchpad. Instead of having its rockets break apart after crashing into the sea, SpaceX will use reverse thrusters to lower them down softly and reuse them.

But I can’t deny the appeal of getting to know Manning better. Even if I weren’t having his baby, his engagement aside, he’s fun and he’s chivalrous and for a few hours on a golf course two months ago, he made me feel like I was something more than a dumb backwoods hick who grew up poor in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nowhere town.

Leaving West Africa was bitter sweet. I had made friends the most of which I would never see again. I was seen as an adult in Liberia and for the first time in my life I was accepted as a grown-up. In fact I was given responsibilities I could never have expected had I remained in the United States. As the captain of a coastal vessel I had the same duties as the captain of any ship, large or small and the decisions I made affected the lives of everyone aboard. Although I never gave it much thought the value of the ship and cargo was worth millions of dollars and I was entrusted with it and the lives of the crew and the occasional passengers that sailed with me. When I embarked on this venture I was under the legal age of 21 and signed for everything “under protest.” The skillsets needed to be the captain of a small ship are the same as those needed on a larger vessel only there were less people to do them. Navigation was the same and ship handling without tugboats or thrusters was even more difficult. I did my own piloting, calculated the center of gravity and figured out fuel, water and cargo placement without even the use of a calculator. Computers, GPS, Depth finder, Loran and Radar were thing not yet available for most ships. Since you don’t miss what you never had, life was good and I did what I had to do. Fortunately for the most part everything worked out well. I remember that when I returned to New York and rode in a subway car thinking “Wow, none of these people know that I just returned from West Africa where I was a harbor pilot and the captain of a ship.” The thought that I had accomplished so much at my young age seemed important to me and I thought that it was something they might want to know. The thought that flashed through my mind next brought me back down to earth. “No one would give a shit!” I was back in New York City and would soon be back out to sea….

In a nutshell, Columbia experienced two failed computers, one of which we restored only to have it fail again at landing. The cause of one of the failures turned out to be a sliver of solder eleven-thousandths of an inch thick that became dislodged when the thrusters were fired, shorting out the CPU board. During the postflight debriefing, I remarked about this incident, “Had we activated the backup flight software when the problem first emerged, loss of vehicle and crew would have resulted.

When the KH-13s weren’t imaging, the hydrazine-powered thrusters kept them high enough to reduce atmospheric drag.

There’s so much testosterone radiating through the air we’re all about to keel over from penis poisoning.

I don’t mention him puking, because despite being a badass unafraid to call him a baby—which we both know he’s not—I don’t rub people’s shortcomings in their face. Life’s too short to be a shithead—the cruel kind, not the take-care-of-yourself kind—and you never know who you’re going to need tomorrow.

Spent the first six or seven years of my life letting my family down. Couldn’t hear. Didn’t know I was supposed to. Then I didn’t know what to do with the words when they came.

No risk, no reward,” Peach says softly. “And, honey, love’s the biggest reward there is. Finding your person? That one in a billion who makes it okay for you to be you?

And you know what happens if he breaks your heart?” Fuck. The thought makes my chest squeeze so bad my lungs go inside out. “You heal, Joey. You remember the good times. You move on.” She pauses in the hallway. “And we break his kneecaps after we plant spider eggs in his bedroom.

I really don’t understand how men can possibly rule so much of the world. They’re such Neanderthals.

When you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, so I sing along louder than all the rest until Coach pops his head out into the hall and threatens to institute mandatory cartoon princess movie night once a week if we don’t find better music.

Aunt Dove gave her a wink. “Just enjoy yourself, pet. And if you see a likely lad, make sure you dance with him, something nice and slow.” “I’m not looking for romance, you know.” “Who said anything about romance?” Aunt Dove widened her eyes. “But if you dance slowly with a fellow, you can usually tell if he knows what he’s about in the bedroom. And make sure you feel his bottom. You want one that’s nice and pert. It means he’s a good thruster.” Evie fled before Aunt Dove could offer any further advice, hurrying down the stairs and hurling herself into the first cab she saw.

There wasn’t a trace of thrusters now.

Owl & Company will present you with graphic and numerical printouts showing in hours, minutes, and seconds your headings and degrees, your rudder degrees, your engine r.p.m.s, your forward and backward speeds, your transverse velocities, your turn rates, the action of your thrusters, the knots of wind you were working in, where you went, what you did, and everything you hit or missed.

The idea of you scares me. The idea of us scares me.