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it was about 1980 i was nine years old

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and

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said you know you guys can probably

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become aerospace engineers or even

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astronauts and this was at the time that

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sally wright and a group of women were

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selected to become astronauts first time

8
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in history

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so he made that comment

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and i said wow that would be so cool so

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we ended up going to a really small

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jesuit school in syracuse new york

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called lemoyne college

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and hindsight is 2020 best thing

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we ever did when i went to undergrad i

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wanted to go into aerospace engineering

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but i went to a really small jesse

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school so i ended up in physics and then

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when i got to graduate school i said

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aerospace engineering it is and then

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during the summers i worked with a group

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called n roads and n roads helped

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students find summer jobs summer

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internships at major corporations like

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the two corporations the one corporation

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i actually worked with was

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anheuser-busch in syracuse and

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baldwinsville new york near syracuse and

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so that was the one group that i worked

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with undergrad and i ended up going to

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the university of maryland for aerospace

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engineering the department chair at the

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time had a ton of money to do research

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and smart materials i went to work for

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ford motor company after graduating from

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university of maryland

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that was great you know i was doing

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research on cars four cars vibration

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analysis and then i went over to work

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for the central intelligence agency

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where i was there for seven and a half

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years you know i did a lot of scientific

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stuff but i also did a lot of

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operational stuff we worked in

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non-proliferation issues

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which um was great i mean he was reverse

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engineering at his best and so i ended

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up doing several other things with the

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central intelligence agency like going

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over volunteering to go over to iraq

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and work there for four months and you

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know help look for wmd things like that

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and so finally when a friend of mine

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leland melvin called me and said you

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know they're accepting applications

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again you should think about applying

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2008 i applied in 2009 i was selected

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and here i am

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oh yes i did nemo that was um

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so i always wanted to do nemo i thought

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when i first saw it i thought it was one

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of the best analogs to space you know

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you can't just leave you kind of stuck

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with these people

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um sick there's six of you um and it's

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very international we practice some

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analogs as if we were going to exploit

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an asteroid um the tools that we would

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use if we were going to an asteroid like

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this

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giant um drill that we had to set up and

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practice taking samples and then

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excursions the worst part of nemo is

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having to purge basically have to flood

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the helmet with sea water salt water

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gets in your eyes and you have to purge

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it

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while you're lying on the bottom

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and so that's probably the least fun