." Coming from my earliest youth, flight had regularly captivated me. I endured in the boonies and also the farmlands, so I didn't have neighbors to go and enjoy with. If I wasn't functioning, I was actually delegated to my very own tools, and typically, I would only be spellbinded due to the creatures as well as specifically, the raptors that I will find." To me, they worked with an independence of some kind or an additional. These birds and also the perspective they have-- they can absorb so much. Therefore, from that aspect on, I understood I intended to be actually involved in tour and aeronautics." I [appreciated] all points air travel, all points spaceflight. I couldn't acquire sufficient of it. I ended up being a serious reader, whereas previously, I wasn't a lot of an audience. I couldn't acquire adequate component to review my heroes from tour and area. They became my role models and the path that they took involved, at some point or even one more, a fairly extensive education and also devotion to carry out properly academically, literally, or athletically. Thus, I tossed on my own into that whole entire type of mindset." When I was benefiting the Aviation service, I managed to soar as well as work with plane that I would certainly fantasize around, taking a look at in the journals Aeronautics Week and Area Technology. Here they are actually, appropriate facing me." ... Thus, my career has actually been as close as possible to that of a tour test engineer. And after that, precisely the heels of being spellbinded through atmospheric flight, functioning in human spaceflight has placed me over the Moon.".-- Dr. Donald Mendoza, Chief Developer, NASA Design & Safety Center, NASA's Ames Proving ground.Image Credit Rating: NASA/Dominic HartInterviewer: NASA/Thalia Patrinos.Browse through a number of our other Images of NASA.