On October 31, 2024, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Chris Cassidy. Chris served as a Navy SEAL for 10 years and completed four deployments, two in Afghanistan and two in the Mediterranean Sea. In 2004, NASA selected Cassidy as an astronaut candidate, and in February 2008, he was assigned to STS-127, a Space Shuttle mission to deliver part of the Japanese Experiment Module to the International Space Station. Cassidy embarked on two additional missions in March 2013 and April 2020, before retiring in October 2020. Today, he serves as the President and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum located in Arlington, Texas.
Alfredo: How has being in the Navy prepared you to be an astronaut?
Chris Cassidy: Being an astronaut is what I would call a very operational job. In operations, you have a plan, and then you execute the plan. And there’s always challenges and hurdles and curve balls that monkey up your plan and you have to adapt and figure it out.
And then just continue on what’s the best course from there. Military is the same and the same thing. We do a bunch of training, whether the mission is on land or in the, on the water or in the air with planes. Whatever the mission is, whatever the target is, whatever the objective, you pull together all your intelligence and your resources, and you make a plan and you go do it, and then something happens and you’ve got to react and, and the best trained unit is the one that everybody is anticipating and thinking through what am I going to do if this happens? What am I going to do if X and Y happens? And so that was sort of ingrained in me as a military guy on how to think.
So when I became an astronaut, that was the single most thing that prepared me to be a good astronaut, was just that operational mindset. What is going to break next? What’s the next. Thing I got to figure out and what, what can I, what decision can I defer to later and what do I got to decide on right now?
Alfredo: I know that you were talking earlier about Bill Shepherd. Was he the person that inspired you to become an astronaut?
Chris Cassidy: Yeah, it was really him. It wasn’t until talking to Bill Shepherd and meeting him that I really got motivated while I was at the Naval Academy. The Naval Academy has, I think it’s still true, the most astronauts selected from it. And so while I was there, you learn about those people and, and I was always intrigued by them. But meeting Shepherd was the thing, the single support.
Alfredo: Was there ever a pivotal moment that if it went differently, you wouldn’t have become an astronaut? Like maybe something where you had been discerning whether or not you should apply or anything that really drove home the point that you should?
Chris Cassidy: So we select astronauts every four years. I applied for the astronaut class of 2000, but very short cycle. By that I mean, the applications were due in like a month when I realized you could apply there. So I didn’t have a lot of time to pull it.
I was in graduate school, but I hadn’t finished it. September 11th, 2001 hadn’t happened yet, so I hadn’t had time in Afghanistan. So that year I didn’t get an interview. I didn’t get selected. Four years later, in 2004, the class of 2004, I had completed graduate school. I had been to Afghanistan and I was just, I was four years older. Just a better applicant. So there was nothing in there that if it hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t [have been an astronaut.] To some degree, if 9/11 hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have been as separate of a candidate. I don’t know if I’m explaining that right, but that war lasted for a long time.
I was one of very few people in our country that had actually been in combat in Afghanistan. And so the, the Astronaut selection Committee was I think, kind of intrigued by that. Like, oh, this is different from all the other applicants. This guy’s been over there. So that probably was one thing.
Alfredo: What did you do to keep yourself occupied during your time in space, and what was your favorite thing to do?
Chris Cassidy: So you can do lots of stuff up there. You can read books, watch movies, play instruments. If you’re that kind of inclined, you can talk to your crew mates. But you can do a lot of those things on Earth. What you can’t do on Earth is look out the window at Earth. So pretty much all of us use our free time to just watch Earth go by and take pictures of different things. Most of us are drawn to picture-taking of places where we’ve lived or where our family members are.
And so that was probably my favorite thing to do. It’s also fun. It’s an international program, so you’re up there with astronauts from Japan, Canada, fifteen different European countries depending on who’s up there, the Russian guys, and us. So it’s really fun to just sit around the dinner table and share food from everybody’s country.
Alfredo: What is your proudest accomplishment?
Chris Cassidy: The proudest accomplishment is… so in SEAL training the class and the instructors vote on who’s going to be the honor man, which is like the top graduate based on your peers, your classmates, and your performance, what the instructors view as your performance.
And I was voted the honor man of my SEAL training class. And that for me is my most proud thing because, it’s hard to get through SEAL training, but I really just appreciated that vote from my friends and peers. Yeah. I didn’t think I did anything different than they did.
Alfredo: What two things did you miss most while in space?
Chris Cassidy: The smell of things. So, think about things that are that you associate here on Earth with pleasant scents. Fresh mowed grass in the summertime. Chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, Thanksgiving meal being cooked in the kitchen, perfume from your wife or girlfriend. You know, there’s certain things that you associate with just pleasant experiences and home. I grew up by the ocean in Maine, and the smell of the ocean, if you’re sitting on a dock, you don’t have any of that space. You just, it’s, it’s kind of a very sterile environment like a hospital. You don’t really smell anything. It’s just a room. You don’t have the fresh air, like a wind or a breeze blowing on your face.
So the smells and just like. this sense of being outside. Have you, have you ever gone through the woods on a hike or something like that? Mm-Hmm. It just feels different. Maybe smells a little different. The air is fresh and crisp and you don’t have that.
Alfredo: What kind of advice would you give to juniors and seniors in high school?
Chris Cassidy: That’s a good one. Because there’s lots of things. There’s easy basic ones. Like be early. Don’t be late to stuff. Have a good attitude. Listen more than you talk. Mildly, just generally be a good person. I think probably what I would’ve wanted to hear myself when I was in your shoes is appreciate every day that you have. That sounds really high and lofty, but when you go to your scene, you know, you go to a football game with your friends and watch your friends out on the field you’re playing at your rival. That’s a fun experience for a high school kid.
Your prom, in the spring, your graduation in the spring, those are amazing days in your life that are going to stick with you forever. And then your first day you walk into college, you go to college graduation, the first day you get a job. All those moments are significant. And sometimes we’re just so busy going on to the next thing. You don’t realize it. For me, I drove underwater vehicles in SEAL teams and I remember the day that I dove my last dive in the underwater vehicle. I just thought it was another day and didn’t really appreciate, oh man, this is the last time in my life I’ll ever be driving this really super cool thing. So it’s just, a sense of moments in time are really special and to appreciate that.
