EXPEDITION 42/43 CREW INTERVIEW TERRY VIRTS – FLIGHT ENGINEER 6/COMMANDER Q: Why Did You Want to Be an Astronaut?
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EXPEDITION 42/43 CREW INTERVIEW TERRY VIRTS – FLIGHT ENGINEER 6/COMMANDER Q: Why did you want to be an astronaut? A: The first book I read in kindergarten was about the Apollo moon landings, so from my youngest days I just wanted to be an astronaut. I didn’t see Apollo as it was going on but there were books about it and I heard about it and it just looked really cool. And there is something about me, naturally, that I just love flying and space. When I was a kid I had space pictures and airplane pictures, all four walls of my room were completely covered with posters of that kind of thing. My family all worked at NASA. My mom and stepdad worked at NASA Goddard and my dad also worked at NASA Goddard, so the space industry was just in my DNA. Let’s find out about your story back from the beginning. Tell me about your hometown. Tell me what it was like growing up there. I grew up in a town called Columbia, Maryland. It is in between Baltimore and Washington, right in the suburban beltway universe there. It was a great place to grow up, very middle class America, a very diverse community, great education, great schools. And I grew up with a good group of family and friends so I was very lucky to have lots of support and a great community to grow up in. Were you able to pick it out from orbit, flying over? You know, one of the very first experiences I had on the space shuttle, just a few minutes after launch, the space shuttle did a roll to heads up maneuver and, looking out the window, I could see the entire east coast of America from South Carolina up to Boston. So one of those white dots down there was Columbia, Maryland. But the orbital mechanics were such that I couldn’t ever see it during the day when I was on the space shuttle, so that is one of the cool things about the six-month flight. There will be times when I will get to see it, so I am looking forward to that. I saw it at night. The east coast of America is amazing at night as there are a lot of lights down there. Give me the thumbnail sketch of your education in Columbia on through college and through the service that led you to become an astronaut. I went to the Howard County public school system in Maryland, a great, amazing public school system, and went to Oakland Mills High School which was a great high school. I can think back on so many teachers. I can remember almost all their names, the classes, the things I learned in each one of these classes. That was such an amazing foundation for the rest of my life. And, by the way, I’m not done going to school. As you know, in many professions, maybe most, you have to learn in some capacity for your whole career, so it’s important to learn what subjects you are good at and where your gifts are and then continue to learn because it will help you throughout your career. From Oakland Mills High School I went to the Air Force Academy. I showed up there as a 17-year-old, never really been away from home, and spent four years at the Air Force Academy and then went to fly jets after that. I thought about trying to go to graduate school but what I really wanted to do was fly airplanes so I became a pilot in the Air Force. 1 EXPEDITION 42/43 CREW INTERVIEW TERRY VIRTS – FLIGHT ENGINEER 6/COMMANDER What kind of assignments did you have? During my first 11 years in the Air Force I had 11 different mailing addresses as I moved around a lot. I became an F-16 pilot and was at Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, Luke Air Force Base in Arizona, MacDill in Florida, Homestead in Florida, Moody in Georgia, Korea Osan Air Force Base, Spangdahlem in Germany—that was an awesome place to live—moved to Edwards Air Force Base where I went to Test Pilot School becoming an F-16 test pilot there. So my first 11 years I was moving constantly. From there I came to NASA and I have been here ever since. So it was this Air Force career where move, move, move, move, move, and then boom, you are here forever. But it is great. Both phases of my career have been really good and enjoyable. Was the application to be an astronaut something that you always had in mind to do or did it just come up? As a kid I wanted to be an astronaut but I didn’t think it was possible. I mean, to a kid, that is kind of a crazy dream, but I always had it in my mind and I would ask, “Hey, what do you need to be an astronaut?” and someone would say, “Well, you need a technical degree. You need to get some kind of math or science or engineering degree.” So I did that and then I thought being a pilot would probably be a good thing and somebody told me about being a test pilot. It wasn’t until I was at Spangdahlem in Germany that I was trying to decide, you know, what I want to do when I grow up. I realized that I wanted to be an astronaut and that I probably was not going to be able to because that is just crazy and nobody ever gets to do that. But I decided I was just going to try and do it and put in an application for Test Pilot School. While I was at Test Pilot School they announced the Astronaut Class of 2000 and everybody said, “Don’t apply. You’re too young. You’re still a student at Test Pilot School. You’ve got to be experienced. Just wait for the next class. Wait until you get some experience.” And I thought that I would apply, I’ll apply and let them tell me no. I’m not going to tell myself no. There were other guys who were much smarter and better looking than I was but they decided to wait to apply later and I didn’t. I applied and it worked out. I got lucky and got picked. So a lesson I learned from that was don’t ever tell yourself no. Put the application in, go for it. Go try and see what happens. You are one of only a little over 200 different human beings who have ever been on this space station. How do you hope to use this mission to inspire future space explorers? One of the best parts of the mission is going to be talking to kids. While in space, we will have opportunities to call down to schools, colleges, universities, middle schools, different-aged kids, and that is really fun. People are really excited. They don’t normally get to talk to astronauts in space so that is going to be one of my favorite things to do. And then when I get back, for the rest of my life, I will have an opportunity to tell people about the space mission, and more than just tell them about what I did in space, I can tell them what we as people can do and are going to be doing in space and share some of 2 EXPEDITION 42/43 CREW INTERVIEW TERRY VIRTS – FLIGHT ENGINEER 6/COMMANDER the motivation with them. Everybody is not going to be an astronaut but everybody has gifts that they have been given and just to have the opportunity to inspire people to use their gifts, to go for it. And just because you don’t get to be the astronaut or you don’t become whatever, there are still lots of good things that you can do with your own gifts that God has given you. To fly in space is to take on a job that has some unique risks, but I am guessing that you think these risks are worthwhile since you are going ahead and doing it. Tell me what is it that we are learning by sending people to space that makes it worth doing. There is a lot of risk in space exploration. The way we explore space is twofold. We have robots. We send probes to Mars and Jupiter and telescopes so we are sending these robots out in space. They are amazing and I am very interested in them and like to talk to the people that are doing these things. Then we send people into space and people are obviously where the risk is, particularly from an astronaut’s point of view, but what humans can do is think and repair things and make modifications and, you know, think on the fly. The amount of work that you can do as a person is tremendous. But, more than that, it is the fact that we are actually sending people to live in space. I tell people, you can read about it and you can see a lot. You can see the islands and look at that pretty sunset, that’s a nice picture. Or you can go there and I would much rather go there. It’s a lot easier to look at the pictures.