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i'm raj achary the commander of the nasa

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spacex crew 3 mission to the

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international space station i was born

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in milwaukee wisconsin but moved within

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a week to cedar falls iowa my dad had

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come to the united states to get his

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master's degree where he met my mom he

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got a job at john deere and that's why

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they moved to iowa

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one of the biggest things i took from my

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iowa upbringing is sort of that inherent

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community strength and the interest

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people had and everyone else succeeding

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i think i first became interested in

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flying at a pretty young age

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my mom has pictures of me from back as a

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kindergartner being really interested in

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space flight

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and i think as i got into junior high

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the idea of going to the air force or

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flying became very appealing to me as

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well and so astronomical engineering was

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a great way to be involved in the

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engineering for space

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so at the air force academy there's all

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kinds of different engineering paths you

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have the opportunity to continue on and

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do graduate school programs it allowed

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me to go on and get a graduate degree at

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mit and it was a wonderful opportunity

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to take it to the next level one path

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that is pilot training in my life and

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another path is to continue this

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engineering i found i really liked

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engineering a lot more than i thought i

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would and then a friend of mine had

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started talking about test pod school in

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which i realized oh that's actually a

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so for me i think i first started

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thinking about the idea of being an

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astronaut was about the 2008 time frame

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but it dawned on me that oh man this is

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not just some weird like i want to be an

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astronaut when i grow up it's actually

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in the path that's realistically

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achievable

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[Applause]

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so what do you say how about i introduce

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the 2017

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astronaut candidates

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raja is a 39 year old lieutenant colonel

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in the united states air force from

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cedar falls iowa

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and so that was how i wound up on the

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path of applying

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so on the spacex vehicle my job as a

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commander is a few fold i don't need to

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tell kayla tom or matthias how to do

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their jobs they already know how to do

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their jobs that's really more a matter

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of for that one percent of the time

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where something off nominal happened

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what is the best split of resources of

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you know what is the best interactions

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between those players to get the best

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result and so managing those different

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uh pieces of the puzzle is really i

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think what the crew part of the

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commander job is

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it's really mind-boggling when you think

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about how much effort it takes to put

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people in space and then to sustain them

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in space

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i think what's cool and why i like nasa

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is none of those people are doing it for

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the money

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they're doing it because they believe in

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the mission they're doing it please

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because they believe in in solving

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humanities problems and pushing

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exploration that's the reason people are

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doing it i think if anything it's taught

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us that we as humans have this great

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ability to endure through just about

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anything just have to put your mind to