Rendezvous with Rama

I was reading this book thinking what Ramans were or what purpose of them was. At first, I thought the Ramans’ purpose would be that they destroy the Solar System, but at the middle of the book, I thought their purpose might be nothing and the Rama would be just tomb. At the ending, I understood my guess was wrong.
My favorite chapter is 9, Dragonfly’s Flight, and 10, The Fields of Rama. In these chapters, the youngest officer, Jimmy Pak tries to explore to the Southern Hemisphere. I guess he would be fearless officer and little bit goofy. He has a sky-bike called Dragonfly and he was proud of his machine, but bringing such as heavy machine was violation. (I can understand his character from this episode.) He flied using the Dragonfly, but suddenly thunder boomed and crashed, and the full power of the electrical storm hit Jimmy. Finally the little sky-bike’s right wing broke off completely and Dragonfly crashed to the ground. I read chapter 9 and 10 very quickly because of the interesting story.
During the story, there are some strange description such as ‘Are we climbing down, or are we climbing up?’, or ‘The strange Cylindrical Sea curved up on either side of the explorers, and over their heads. I imagined those descriptions. To tell you the truth, I want to experience such amazing gravity, although I would feel a little bit fear. I think it would be the same as the world of a scuba diving. In fact, I’ve heard that astronomers practice space activities under water, because the world under water is less gravity like space. When I finished reading this book, some strange experiences in this book inspired me to travel into space some day.