I'm Raja Chari, the commander of the NASA SpaceX
Crew three mission to the international space station.
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but moved within a week to Cedar Falls,
Iowa.
My dad had come to the United States to get his master's degree where he met my
mom. He got a job at John Deere and that's why they moved to Iowa.
One of the biggest things I took for my Iowa upgrading is sort of that inherent,
uh,
community strength and the interests people had in everyone else succeeding and
having a tight knit community.
I think I first became interested in flying at a pretty young age.
My mom has pictures of me from back as a kindergartener being really interested
in space flight. Uh, and I think as I got into junior high,
the idea of going into the air force or flying became very appealing to me as
well. And so astronautical engineering was a great way to be involved in the
engineering for space. So at the air force academy,
there's all kinds of different engineering paths.
You have the opportunity to continue on and do graduate school programs.
It allowed me to go on and get a graduate degree at MIT and it was a wonderful
opportunity to take it to the next level. One path that is pilot training in my
life. And another path is to continue in this engineering.
It turns out I really liked engineering a lot more than I thought I would.
And then a friend of mine had started talking about test pilot school and which I
realized like, oh, that's actually a combination of both of these things.
So for me,
I think I first started thinking about the idea of being an astronaut was about
the 2008 timeframe, but it dawned on me that, oh man,
this is not just some weird, like I want to be an astronaut when I grew up,
it's actually in the path that realistically achievable.
So what are you saying?
How about I introduce the 2017 candidates
Raja is a 39 year old Lieutenant Colonel in the United States air force from
Cedar falls, Iowa.
And so that was how I wound up on the path of applying.
So on the SpaceX vehicle, my job as a commanders is a few fold.
I don't need to tell Kayla, Todd or Mathias how to do their jobs.
They already know how to do their jobs.
And that's really more a matter of for that 1% of the time where it's something
off nominal happened, what is the best split of resources of, you know,
what is the best interactions between those players to get the best result?
And so managing those different pieces of the puzzle is really,
I think what the crew part of the commander job is,
It's really mind boggling.
When you think about how much effort it takes to put people in space and then to
sustain them in space, I think what's cool.
And why like NASA is none of those people are doing it for the money. They're
doing it because they believe in the mission.
They're doing it because they believe in,
in solving humanity's problems and pushing exploration.
That's the reason people are doing it. I think if anything,
it's taught us that we as humans have this great ability to endure through just
about anything. Just have to put your mind to it.