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really it all started when i was very

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very young and watched the u.s land on

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the moon for the first time and so i was

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always interested in being part of it

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and then ultimately being an astronaut

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to me means being an explorer

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to explore the universe so i thought you

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know being a physicist wanting to

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understand the universe and then being

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an explorer to go out and and see it

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firsthand was was what i really wanted

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to do well i went to rice university in

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houston for college

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i chose ice university because i wanted

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to go to a school that was good in

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science and engineering i wasn't exactly

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sure what i wanted to study but i knew

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it was in that general

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area somewhere

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and i wanted to go to a smaller school i

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wasn't really enamored by the larger

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schools that we have in texas i was

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extremely fortunate that i was hired on

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to work at the johnson space center

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right out of undergraduate school so i

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was hired by a contractor at that time

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it was the rockwell space operations

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corporation that had the contract to do

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the work in the mission control center

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so i was hired as a flight controller

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so i did that for a number of years and

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at that point um after about three years

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i decided i wanted to further my

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education i only had my undergraduate

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degree at that point so that's when i

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went back to rice and got my masters and

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phd in space physics to sort of get a

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little bit off this planet understand

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some of the solar system i did a number

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of other things too along the way before

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i became an astronaut at one point i was

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asked to do avionics integration with

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our russian partners which was really

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interesting experience as an astronaut

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has been absolutely fantastic i've been

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able to do

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so many things that are just so exciting

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i spent six months on this nearly six

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months on the space station

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living and working there which was a

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fantastic experience

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leading up to that when by the time i

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flew we were winding down our shuttle

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program and so i actually flew

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on uh the soyuz rocket with the russians

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what was very exciting to me about that

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is that i was actually trained as the

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co-pilot on on the soyuz i was fully

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trained just like the commander to do

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everything that needed to be done for

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launch rendezvous docking undocking we

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actually

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relocated our soyuz so we briefly

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undocked from the station and went on to

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another docking port and re-docked and

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so i was trained in all of that

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which was which was really neat because

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i'm just a little physicist

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a nasa astronaut and being able to

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learn how to

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and being expected to know how to fly

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an international partner vehicle is is

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quite something i think and having to do