1992 space shuttle endeavor crew11/16/2023 ![]() During this memorable but often sleepless year, I was a subject in Drs. My training fortuitously took me to the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, for a year of medical internship ( Figure 1). The marriage of medical science and space exploration became all-apparent to me, and it certainly rekindled my childhood aspirations to become an astronaut. Benefiting greatly from wonderful mentors in experimental physiology, I began studies of microvascular fluid shifts that occur in the weightlessness of space ( 1), and also began to design exercise hardware to counteract the deleterious affects of 0-G inactivity on the “antigravity” musculoskeletal system ( 2). Applying to medical school and becoming a physician was a natural choice for someone with these interests, but the opportunity to go to a medical school within driving distance of a major NASA field center-the NASA Ames Research Center-was simple good fortune. Human physiology taken to its extremes, be they high altitudes, the extremes of temperature, the depths of the oceans or the unknowns of space travel has always been a fascination of mine. These experiences offer insight into the breadth and importance of our nation’s current and future space explorations.Įducation, Training and Flight Chronology ![]() Over the course of four spaceflights, my roles and responsibilities have included medical care and biomedical science, but have extended far beyond to many other areas of science and operations. The synergy of medicine, the physiologic research I was involved with, and spaceflight was a natural, and led to my eventual selection to the Astronaut Corps in 1992. With the advent of the Space Shuttle program, which first flew in 1981, there became a need for scientists and engineers in a variety of fields related to space science to join the ranks of astronauts: astrophysicists, chemical engineers, computer scientists, aeronautical engineers, material scientists, physiologists and physicians. As I pursued my education, other interests certainly came and went, but the desire to explore and to be involved in scientific discovery remained a constant. I was similarly drawn to medicine as a means to help others, and as a field with many challenges and opportunities. ![]() The son of an aerospace engineer who helped rocket the crew of Apollo 11 to their unimaginable destination, I grew up with an inner drive to one day also make my passage to space. As a seven year old boy, I watched in awe along with the rest of the world as humans first left footprints on the lunar surface. ![]()
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