Wait. Before it sounds like were getting on someone’s case, we’ll clarify. Scott Parazynski (born 1961) is a former Nasa astronaut who has completed five spaceflights that added up to more than eight weeks in space and 47 hours on spacewalks. He’s also one of about 4,000 individuals in the world who have climbed to the top of Mt. Everest. And he’s the only person to have both traveled in space and reached the Mt. Everest summit.  

All of these experiences are combined in his memoir titled The Sky Below:A True Story of Summits, Space and Speed. With the interest in space getting new life through the adventures of Elon Musk and his SpaceX rockets and missions – and the prospect of private space travel looming ever larger – this book can take you back to the days when every space launch was awe-inspiring. Scott, who is also a physician, served as a crewmate and “personal physician” for John Glenn’s return to space in 1998.

Although he’s been climbing mountains since he was a teenager, Scott’s successful climb of Mt. Everest came on his second attempt in 2009 at the age of 48, proving that when you have a hunger for adventure and conquest, there “ain’t no mountain high enough.”

In an interview in Forbes, he was asked how he can top these two accomplishments: traveling in space and scaling Everest. His reply was, “There is still so much to explore on, under and above our planet that my bucket list has never been fuller. Politics and global security notwithstanding, it’s a really exciting time to be alive, with the advances we have in transportation, sensors, robotics and analytics. Even if we’ve been to a certain environment many times before, we can go back and extract even greater science, and press our technologies to even greater extremes.”

And as if Scott Parazynski’s resume wasn’t impressive enough, he decided to add business founder/owner to it. After returning from the International Space Station, Parazynski decided to launch a company based on what he’d learned during his time as an astronaut. So, Parazynski started Fluidity Tech, a Houston-based technology company focused on redefining movement through 3-dimensional space.” Or in layman’s terms, Fluidity’s missions is to “simplify and improve motion”. From their website, “using an astronaut’s perspective on intuitive motion through space, we have patented a unique and intuitive drone controller that anyone, whether they’re eight or eighty, can pick up and begin using immediately.” Their plans span far beyond drones, and include surgical robotics, gaming, and virtual reality.

If all goes according to plan for Fluidity, baby boomers should be flying drones with ease very soon. And based on Scott Parazynski's remarkable past, his odds of succeeding are...high.