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Next to strapping yourself into
a rocket, it's the next best

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thing to high-five your buddy,
clip his seat belt, close the

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door, and then watch
them blast off.

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So I grew up in a town in
southern Maine -- small town

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called York, Maine.

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Went to high school there.

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And then from there went on to
the Naval Academy with a brief

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one-year stop at the Naval
Academy Prep School in Newport,

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Rhode Island. Turns out that was
the greatest thing that ever

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happened to me because I matured
tremendously, took the same

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courses that I took my freshman
year at the Naval Academy, and

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really it set me up for success
going into the Naval Academy.

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You know, I really had a good
time at the Naval Academy.

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The first year is a drag,
rigorous academics, but piled on

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top of that you have to know
all this military knowledge, you

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have to run around and
call everybody sir.

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But there's so many funny
stories that come out of it.

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And my best friends that I have
in life today are from that

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year.

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I had been in the SEAL teams
for about four years, around the

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same time I met Bill Shepherd,
who was an astronaut here --

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Navy SEAL; become an astronaut;
was a commander of the first

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space station crew.

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And in talking to him, I
realized, "Hey, my background is

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kind of similar to his.

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Maybe I could try to become an
astronaut also." And realized

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that he went to MIT in the ocean
engineering department, and

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maybe I could pursue
something similar.

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Well, I was driving underwater
vehicles in the SEAL teams.

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And just so happened one of
the professors in the ocean

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engineering department at MIT
was named John Leonard was

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studying underwater
vehicle navigation.

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And that's what I was -- I was
a navigator of an underwater

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vehicle in the SEAL teams.

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So it seemed to me like it made
perfect sense and the stars were

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aligning.

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I came in the class of 2004.

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Those first couple of years
you're an astronaut candidate,

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not really eligible to be
assigned to anything but just

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learning the ropes of
how to be an astronaut.

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Came out of that program 2006,
spent a couple years doing

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various jobs.

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I supported Expedition 15, I
think it was, and worked as

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CAPCOM for a while before I was
assigned to be part of the crew

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of STS-127.

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And we launched in
the summer of 2009.

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So back up about a year and a
half from that is when we began

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training all here in Houston.

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Our main role was to bring up
the exposed facility that's

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outside on the Japanese portion
of the space station, along with

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some batteries for the
Port 6 solar array.

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And then probably about 2010
or '11 I started training for

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Expedition 35, 36.

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And long -- much longer training
process, two and a half years.

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Mostly because half your time's
in Russia or some other country,

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Japan or German.

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And Russian language is a
huge part of that training.

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So we spent a lot of time in
the classroom one-on-one with an

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instructor, and then ultimately
launched from Baikonur, and