I have a dream where I am flying to the International
Space Station (ISS) in the Dream Chaser commercial crew vehicle I am helping to
design. My co-worker Steve Lindsey,
former head of the astronaut office and a pilot of two Shuttle flights and
commander on three others, sits in the pilot seat. Former NASA flight director
and also current co-worker, John Curry, is on the ground directing our flight
in mission control so we hear his voice in our headsets. He is wearing a special vest we gave him as a
salute to Gene Kranz. Many of the
engineers I work with on designing the various subsystems of the Dream Chaser
are in flight control with John, sitting on consoles supporting the
flight. This dream is so vivid because this
could be a reality five years from now.
The next step in making this more than just a recurring night-time
dream is I submitted my application today for the NASA astronaut program. The applications process closes January 27,
2012 and then the waiting begins. Last
time NASA had an astronaut selection in 2008-09 they had over 3500 applicants,
400 Highly Qualified Candidates, 120 selected for interviews, and 9 selected. I was fortunate enough to interview in
December 2008, but I was not selected.
Those selected for interviews this time will go down to the NASA Johnson
Space Center in Houston between August-October, 2012. From that group, finalists will be selected
for a second interview and a complete medical evaluation that will be conducted
from November 2012-January 2013. The
next class of astronauts will be announced in March 2013 and start their
training in June 2013.
I don’t know if I have a better chance of being selected
this time than in 2009 or not. It is an
honor to get as far as I did the last time and from that small group there
aren’t many bad choices they can make because the folks are all amazing. If I were chosen, I would go through
approximately two years of training before the possibility of then training for
a specific flight. The timing could
allow me to fly on Dream Chaser on a flight to ISS in 2016 or 2017. That would make my engineer’s dream of
getting to fly to space on something I helped design a reality.
