The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle: Growing Up an Astronauts Kid in the Glorious 80s

The families behind America’s astronaut heroes are just like yours … sort of. This is the hilarious true story of one of those families.

While many children grow up wanting to become an astronaut, Patrick Mullane grew up the child of one. In his memoir, The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle: Growing Up an Astronaut’s Kid in the Glorious 80s, Mullane shares his hilarious coming-of-age story. It’s a story about his quirky and death-defying father, a mother with a secret, and a cast of characters from his extended family who showed their love for him in often bizarre ways. 

In 1978, when Mullane was ten years old, his father, Mike Mullane, was chosen in the very first group of space shuttle astronauts – a group that included Sally Ride (America’s first woman in space) and four members of the Challenger crew who were lost when it tore apart in 1986. In The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle, Mullane tells of how his father’s profession defined him, first as a young “military brat” hopping from base to base with his parents and two sisters, and then as a pimple-faced, unknown nerd in a large Houston high school where he often felt like one of the pathetic underdog characters in a John Hughes film of the day. The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle is about Mullane’s hilarious efforts to be a hero in his own world as he believed his father and his pop culture icons – Indiana Jones, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker – were in theirs.

The Father, Son, and Holy Shuttle is an uplifting story at a time when the world desperately needs one. With each turned page, you will hope that there is just one more paragraph, one more chapter, one more gut-busting laugh waiting. And you will come to appreciate in a way never before possible the sacrifices “astro families” make for their astronaut loved one, for their nation, and for each other.