“When opportunities appear, take them. Don’t vacillate. “Sometimes a route is not straight, you have to take turns.”

Such were the words of Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz at the Lawrence Senior Center in Essex County, Massachusetts. Franklin Chang-Diaz, in addition to being a Distinguished Citizen of Costa Rica, is the CEO and founder of the Ad Astra Rocket Company -an aerospace enterprise that is working with NASA to develop the VASIMR space propulsion system that may one day power a manned mission to Mars. Dr. Chang-Diaz is also in the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

According to an article by Jill Harmacinski of The Eagle-Tribune in North Andover, Dr. Chang-Diaz will appear at the Lawrence High School and a Technology Center this afternoon. These appearances, which include questions from the audience and a slide show featuring photographs from his many space missions, are free to the public of Lawrence.

Also in the audience at the Lawrence Senior Center was Dr. Chang-Diaz’s daughter, Commonwealth Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz.

The crux of the speech delivered by Dr. Chang-Diaz yesterday at the Lawrence Senior Center was that if a young man from Costa Rica was able to accomplish his dreams of space exploration to the degree he has, anyone should be able to pursue his or her dreams.

The personal and professional story of Dr. Chang-Diaz is very moving. It begins in San Jose in the mid 1960s, when he sent a handwritten letter to NASA stating his desire of traveling to the United States and becoming an astronaut. To his surprise he got a reply that would be instrumental to the young Tico’s future: for the most part, positions at NASA were only open to American citizens

The NASA employee who sent that frank letter is probably not aware of how much of a positive impact he had on young Franklin Chang-Diaz. There was no hint of rejection, only opportunity. Becoming a U.S. citizen was just a mere formality, something that Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz would accomplish less than 15 years after arriving in Connecticut. He became an astronaut in 1981, and later would log over 1600 hours in space.

The Costa Rica Star had the privilege of corresponding with Dr. Franklin Chang-Diaz in a previous article that touched on various aerospace accomplishments in Costa Rica during 2011.