What if you spent your entire life preparing to become an astronaut, only to realize that reaching space might not change who you are? This week on Aspiring Martians, I'm joined by Makiah Eustice, an aerospace engineer, U.S. Air Force officer, creative, and three-time analog astronaut whose journey toward space has taken her through military flight testing, engineering, research, and simulated missions to both Mars and the Moon. After studying aerospace engineering at Texas A&M University, Makiah began building a career around her dream of becoming an astronaut. She founded the Aggie Astronaut Corps to help students find meaningful ways to prepare for spaceflight, became a Brooke Owens Fellow, and went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force, where her work included aircraft structures, flight testing, and space-program oversight. More recently, she began a systems engineering fellowship with Blue Origin, supporting its Blue Ring spacecraft team. But Makiah's story is about more than engineering. Before she dreamed of becoming an astronaut, she was drawn to music, dance, storytelling, and the arts. And as her career has evolved, so has her understanding of what it means to pursue an extraordinary ambition without sacrificing the other parts of herself. Her experiences as an analog astronaut have taken her to the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah, HI-SEAS in Hawaiʻi, and most recently Poland's LunAres habitat, where she served on the all-women Nivalis crew during the inaugural World's Biggest Analog. In our conversation, we explore how Makiah found her way into aerospace engineering, why she created opportunities for aspiring astronauts when she couldn't find them herself, what she learned from living in simulated extraterrestrial environments, and how her understanding of success has changed along the way. We also talk about leadership, mentorship, collaboration between future off-world communities, the importance of creativity, and the relationship between ambition and anxiety, a subject Makiah explored in her recent TEDx talk, Ambition, Anxiety, and the Outer Space in Between. Because preparing to become an astronaut is one thing. Learning to appreciate who you are while pursuing that dream might be just as important. ~ A huge thank you to Makiah for taking the time to join me today and for sharing her journey, curiosity, and perspective. And of course, thank you to Nick Thorburn for the stellar theme music, Ceci Giglio for the incredible graphics, Jero Squartini for the amazing animations, to RDan, Leila, Inka, and Carl for admining the Facebook group, and to my family for supporting this project.
