Franklin Chang Díaz

The Boy Who Would Not Give Up

Franklin Chang Díaz was born in San José, Costa Rica, in 1950. His family came from both Costa Rica and China. As a boy he read everything he could about space. He and his friends would climb into a big cardboard box, count down, and pretend they were blasting into orbit.

Franklin decided he was going to do it for real. As a teenager he traveled to the United States with very little money and almost no English. He finished high school, learned the language, and kept going all the way to a doctorate in applied plasma physics from MIT.

In 1980 NASA chose him as an astronaut. He flew on the space shuttle seven times — a record he shares with just one other astronaut. He helped build the International Space Station and ran science experiments in orbit.

Franklin was not finished. He started a company to build a rocket engine that runs on plasma, a super-hot gas. A plasma engine is gentle but it can keep pushing for months, so it could one day carry people to Mars faster than the rockets we use now.

Part 1 · Reading Comprehension

Part 2 · Engineering Challenge: Slow and Steady

A regular rocket gives one huge push and then coasts. A plasma rocket gives a tiny push that never stops. Think about which is better for which job.

Part 3 · Think About It