As Dimitri Petrov boarded the spaceship, he felt ruffled, because his childhood dream had become accomplished. His colleague, Alexandria Gomez, was a very experienced astronaut and was miserable because it was her last space mission before retirement. She was about fifty-three years old and was in great shape because of space. She was the oldest astronaut in the world right now and wanted to keep it that way. She described space as an empty land, filled with places never explored by mankind. Then he boarded the spaceship and swiftly put on his seatbelt, because he knew the control centre had started the countdown already. He put on his helmet and flipped the engine on, when his headphones said, "Twenty-three seconds till launch." He thought of the people he loved who were watching him on his first trip into space. He thought of his parents, moving to Canada so he could get a good education and live freely, and he thought about his brother, Abram, who had played Dimitri's space games and taught him about all his heroes: Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepard, and Chris Hadfield. …show more content…
. . ,” boomed his headphones. He braced himself for high-speed movement and prayed not to die. He closed his eyes for some time, until his commander, Alexandria Gomez, revealed that they were inside space safely. Then, Alexandria pulled her engine throttle to full speed and Dimitri did the same. After what felt like hours, Alexandria said, "We've reached zero gravity. You have fun, I'll man the controls." He slowly took off his seatbelt and stumbled to the floor—wait, no, he floated above the floor. He did a backstroke and relaxed for a few minutes. He only stopped because he had heard a loud alarm going off. He floated to a nearby bar and grabbed hold of it. He then pulled himself to his seat and asked Alexandria what was going on. "There is a power failure in Engine D," she said glumly. Worried, he asked her what he should