Dr. Enrico Mercanti is a NASA satellite expert who believes that explaining space physics can be as easy as ordering a pepperoni pizza.
A veteran of three decades of interstellar investigation, Dr. Mercanti recently retired as deputy to the chief of the Goddard Space Flight Center's Advanced Missions Analysis Office to concentrate on writing books that combine science fact with a dollop of science fiction.
For those who struggled through high school algebra, talking to a real-life rocket scientist can be an intimidating endeavor. But the self-effacing Annapolis resident thinks too much high-tech talk has given science a bad rap.
Dr. Mercanti, who was project manager for the $500 million Orbiting Geophysical Observatory, began spinning space yarns as a respite from compiling dense technical reports and as a way to entertain sons Gus, now 43, and Eddie, 41, using characters taken from his kitchen pantry.
His children delighted in hearing about characters inspired by macaroni and pizza rather than molecules and atoms.
"People know the vocabulary of Italian food. It's like hot dogs," says Dr. Mercanti.
In Dr. Mercanti's version of "Pasta Wars," a kindly professor captured by aliens is transported to planet Baccala (codfish) that is ruled by President Pepperoni and General Linguine.
But there's a happy ending. After being invited to Earth for a hearty dinner of expanding meatballs, space aliens float harmlessly back to their own planet.
His sons fondly recall the adventures of Planet Meatball.
"If there were cartoons on, forget it," says Eddie Mercanti, who works for the U.S. Army. "We wanted to hear the stories."
Gus Mercanti says the stories piqued his curiosity about the cosmos. "There wasn't a lot of sense in them," says the administrator at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. "What it did arouse in me was an interest ++ in space that's lasted with me to this day."
Their 70-year-old father is looking for an illustrator for his nearly dozen stories, someone zany enough to visualize a meeting between Steven Spielberg and Mama Leone.
Dr. Mercanti's space career is a quantum leap from the days he spent working in his father's Mount Vernon, N.Y., tailor shop. He is the son of immigrants from eastern Italy, and his desire to succeed was shaped by his experiences as a first-generation American.
Dr. Mercanti attributes his lifelong love of books to his parents' emphasis on education over more worldly diversions such as the local billiard hall, although he admits that at the time he didn't understand his parents' motives.
"My dad had good common sense," Dr. Mercanti recalls. "He wouldn't give me 11 cents to go play pool, but then he'd turn around to give me $5 to buy a textbook. I thought he was crazy!"
A voracious reader, Dr. Mercanti grew up speaking Italian but struggling with spoken English. He devoured Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series and credits the books with helping him understand the nuances of the English language.
While he was working on his doctorate in mechanical engineering -- "supersonic stuff" -- from Kansas State University, Dr. Mercanti worked for Barnes and Reineke, a Chicago-based design firm that he credits with giving him his first taste of applying science to real-life problems.
One of Dr. Mercanti's assignments in the late 1950s involved improving production at a marshmallow plant. He graduated from confections to cars and worked on the prototype of the Corvette, a project he terms a labor of love.
Fixing his career path on a new trajectory, in 1960 he signed on with NASA, then a fledgling government agency. The transition proved easy, and Dr. Mercanti went on to manage a number of NASA projects, including the Solar Optical Telescope.
One of Dr. Mercanti's most exciting investigations came in 1976, when he served as project manager for NASA's Ocean Bathymetry Experiment. The goal of the mission was to help map the ocean floor beneath the Bermuda Triangle, a project he recounts in his manuscript, "Into the Bermuda Triangle," which is under consideration by an area publisher.
Coordinating an armada of satellites and ships, Dr. Mercanti's all-star mission brought together oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, astronaut Rusty Schweickart and President Gerald Ford's son, Jack.
The mission only strengthened Dr. Mercanti's skepticism about UFO sightings and other unexplained phenomena.
"The satellites kind of ruled out that things could have come in from outer space or come up from under the water," he says firmly.
Along with other scientists, Dr. Mercanti is a founding member of the International World Environment and Resources Council, a group dedicated to the preservation and conservation of natural resources. The group's intentions were initially met with great enthusiasm but, to Dr. Mercanti's regret, the council is now "dormant," he says.
Recalling his father's love of books, Dr. Mercanti says parents of the next generation of scientists should take advantage of America's best free resource -- its public libraries. He urges parents to get involved by doing everything possible to get their children interested in science, Dr. Mercanti says.
Even if it means ordering extra pepperoni.