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Tom Marshburn seems to like to do things few attempt.
As a boy in Statesville, he'd dream of building rockets and draw comic books of spaceships shooting to the moon.
As a man, he flies, scuba dives and climbs mountains. In 1980, he hiked 2,600 miles from Canada to Mexico along the Pacific Crest Trail.
And before dawn today, if all goes as planned, Tommy Marshburn, who graduated from Davidson College and Wake Forest medical school, will blast off into space with six other astronauts on board the shuttle Endeavour.
“Since he was a kid, he's wanted to go into space,” said older brother Paul Marshburn of Davidson, a reproductive endocrinologist at Carolinas Medical Center. “Part of it has to do with Tommy's overarching curiosity and desire to further knowledge of humanity.
“He also views space travel as an important bridge builder between countries.”
Indeed, Endeavour's crew of six Americans and a Canadian woman will join another American and Canadian astronaut, two Russians, a Belgian and Japan's Koichi Wakata at the international space station. Wakata will return to Earth on Endeavour after a three-month stay at the station.
Ultimately, the shuttle's marathon 16-day mission will be to complete the massive Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory at the station. That will require five spacewalks – Marshburn, the crew's medical officer, will participate in three.
The launch is set for 5:40 a.m. today. Thunderstorms Tuesday night forced NASA to delay the fueling of the shuttle, but launch managers held out hope that the bad weather would ease and let them take a shot today.
NASA postponed the first attempt Saturday after discovering a hydrogen leak in a venting system outside the shuttle's external fuel tank. The repairs were completed Tuesday, officials said.
About 25 members of Marshburn's family – including his six brothers and sisters – were in Florida on Saturday to witness lift-off. They got word at 1:15 that morning that it had been scrubbed.
“I don't know if we'll all make it for Wednesday,” Paul Marshburn said. “Tommy was concerned he'd put us all out.”
‘Such a smart little boy'
Tommy, 48, is the youngest of the seven Marshburn children. They grew up in a house at Bost Street and Davie Avenue in Statesville, where their father, the Rev. Robert Marshburn, was pastor of First Associated Reformed Presbyterian Church for 19 years until 1969.
Forty years later, Tommy's space travels have the town talking.
“There are still many of us who remember the Marshburn family and all those great-looking children,” said Peggy Rickert, a volunteer receptionist at the church. “They were extremely intelligent children. I remember Rev. Marshburn leading his children singing ‘If I Had a Hammer' and other songs. They were great fun.
“Tom being an astronaut doesn't surprise any of us. He was such a smart little boy.”
He'd build model airplanes and water-propelled rockets in the back yard. He'd sell his self-drawn science fiction comic books to the neighborhood children for a nickel.
“I remember my parents buying quite a few of those comic books,” brother Paul said. “He had a little cottage industry going.”
Tommy was 9 when the family moved to Atlanta, where he graduated from high school. Yet he returned to North Carolina to go to college at Davidson, where his interest in rocket building led him to a physics degree.
After that he got a master's in physics engineering at the University of Virginia. At some point, he “fell madly in love” with medicine and enrolled at Wake Forest medical school. He became the fifth Marshburn child to become a doctor.
His fascination with space never diminished.
After a stint as an emergency room doctor in Seattle, he joined NASA as a flight surgeon in 1994, assigned to Space Shuttle Medical Operations and to the joint U.S./Russian Space Program. In 2003, he was the lead flight surgeon for Expedition 7 to the ISS, providing support from Russia, Kazakhstan and Houston.
“He learned Russian so he could communicate with the Cosmonauts,” Paul Marshburn said. “He did everything he could to put him in a position to go to space. It was never guaranteed.”
A year later, he became an astronaut.
And before most of us rise today, he'll likely be headed to the heights of his comic book heroes – carrying a ring that belonged to his late father.
