Full Transcript: Captain Janet: Welcome to The JP AstroCast, where we are traveling at the speed of thought. Today's episode is brought to you by Hunt Brothers Pizza. Eyezak, can you come help me tidy up our hologram stage for our guest today? Eyezak: Oh, I'm kind of in the middle of something. Can you come here for just a sec? Captain Janet: Oh, well sure Eyezak, how can I help? Eyezak: Well, captain Janet, after hearing Dr. John Grunsfeld speak about being an astronaut, going out for spacewalks, and fixing things in space, I decided that I want to be an astronaut. (Singing). Captain Janet: That's wonderful Eyezak, but as an alien, aren't you already an astronaut? Eyezak; Not the official NASA kind. I'm just looking for where to start. Captain Janet: Well, maybe let’s use the search words, 'Apply to be a NASA astronaut.' Eyezak: Wow, This is the link. I'm going to send my information in. Oh, a master's degree in engineering? I don't have that. Oh, but I am a pretty good pilot. Well, not really, but I am very good on my PlayStation 4. Any special talents? Well, I am an alien that ought to put me way ahead of the pack. Captain Janet: Well, certainly you have some interesting qualities for sure. I'll tell you what, help me get the hologram stage ready and you can ask our guest astronaut Don Thomas, some questions about how he became an astronaut. Eyezak: Perfect. And then I'll become an astronaut for sure. Captain Janet: Well becoming an astronaut can take years of preparation and applying. Eyezak: Years? Like how many years? I'm not getting any younger in alien years, or human years, or dog years. Captain Janet: Let's talk about that later. I think I hear the kids coming. Kids: Eyezak: Captain Janet, the crew is here. We can work on my astro thing later. Captain Janet: Perfect Eyezak! Sounds good. All right my JP space crew, happy to have you gather here at our hologram stage to hear from astronaut Dr. Don Thomas. We have some great snacks for you, so please help yourself, get cosmically comfy and then we'll beam up Astro Don, and talk about his experiences as an astronaut. Eyezak: Hunt Brothers Pizza is proud to support the JP AstroCast, with over 8,000 locations in convenience stores near you, finding a Hunt Brothers Pizza is easy as pie. Choose between Hunt Brothers Pizza's original crust or thin crust, and top your pizza with any of our 10 toppings at no extra charge. With that many options, there's sure to be a topping combo for everyone to enjoy a Hunt Brothers Pizza. Captain Janet: All right, everyone allow me to introduce our guest today. What an honor it is to have Dr. Don Thomas beam up today. Astronaut Don Thomas first got interested in becoming an astronaut when he watched the early astronauts like Allen Shepherd, John Glynn, and Neil Armstrong blast off into space and that made him want to follow in their footsteps, and 33 years later, he would do exactly that. Captain Janet: Don started his professional career as a senior member of the technical staff at the Bell Laboratories Engineering Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey, working on materials issues and semiconductor devices. Ooh, he's super smart. From there, he joined Lockheed's Sciences and Engineering in Houston, Texas as an engineer, working on the space shuttle program. Selected as a mission specialist astronaut in NASA's 13th group of astronauts in 1990, he is a veteran of four space shuttle missions, three aboard Columbia, and one aboard discovery. Captain Janet: He has spent 44 days in space, completing almost 700 orbits of the earth, and traveling 17.6 million miles in the process. After retiring from NASA in 2007, Don became the director of the Hackerman Academic of mathematics and science at Towson University, working to encourage and inspire young Maryland students about the wonders of STEM. Since 2015, Don has been engaged in public speaking, continuing his efforts to excite and inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and astronauts and encouraging all students everywhere to reach for the stars. Most wonderfully astronaut Don Thomas always says yes to speaking to the students of Janet's planet. Welcome Astro Don, thank you for being here today. Kids: Hello Dr. Don! Dr. Don Thomas: Oh, that's the way to do it there. Captain Janet: Eyezak has a question. Eyezak, can you ask about how one becomes, what you want to become? Eyezak: Yeah. How do you become an astronaut? Dr. Don Thomas: Yeah, that's a great question, Eyezak. I wanted to do this since I was just six years old, and when I was six years old, back in 1961, that's when we launched the first American into space and I watched the launch at my kindergarten class there. And as soon as our astronaut was in space, I knew I wanted to do that as well. So this was the dream my whole life, and one thing I recognized early on was, it was going to be really difficult to do this. I knew there was a lot of competition, thousands of people apply to be astronauts and then just a small handful gets selected. So I knew the key, had to be working hard and doing my best in school every single day. Dr. Don Thomas: I never knew if I was good enough, if I could get selected, but I figured I'm going to give it a try, and to do that I got to work as hard as I possibly can and do my absolute best. So that's what I did all through school, and after high school, I went on to college and got my bachelor's degree in physics, one of the sciences. And then I went on to graduate school and got my master's and Ph.D. in engineering, just because I knew that would help me become an astronaut. I also learned to fly. I got my private pilot's license. I learned to skydive, and I taught a university course. Dr. Don Thomas: These are things that are not requirements to be an astronaut, but I noticed that they seemed to really help. I looked at the people that they were selecting, and most of the people had flying experience, skydiving or maybe had taught a university course. So I watched who NASA was selecting and tried to model my career, a little bit around those requirements and what everybody was doing that was getting selected, and the key also for me becoming an astronaut was persistence. Dr. Don Thomas: I dreamed of this when I was six, and I started applying to NASA when I was in my late twenties, and I applied four times, and I got turned down the first time, the second time and the third time. And I felt like giving up on it all, but I really wanted to do this. So the key in any dream you have in life is to never give up on it. You want to keep improving yourself, keep making yourself a better candidate. You don't have to be a A++, 100% perfect student, you just have to work hard and do your absolute best, and nobody will ever argue with that ever. And if you don't give up, you work hard, you keep going on your journey, on your dream. I'm convinced that you can become anything you want to in your lifetime. Captain Janet: One of my favorite stories is how deep they went into looking into Dr. Don's past when he applied to NASA. And wow, can you imagine being investigated by the FBI? Maybe you might think twice before you post something that isn't so nice on social media. Dr. Don, can you tell us more about that? Dr. Don Thomas: Yeah, that's a great question there Miss Janet. The third time that I applied, NASA invited me down to the Johnson Space Center for a week of medical testing in an interview. And out of the thousands of people that apply NASA selects a hundred individuals. They bring you to Houston and again, you spend a full week, most of it is on a very thorough medical exam, and then there's a one hour interview. The interview is very simple, they just ask me, "Hey, tell me what you did since high school? Why'd you major in physics." They're just asking... They want you to talk about yourself and asking general questions. Dr. Don Thomas: And I went through all that and it went really well, and then a week later, some of my friends started calling me up from across the country. And they were calling me up and they said, "Hey, Don, the FBI's been calling about you." So usually when the FBI is calling about you, it's either really good or really bad, right? In this case, it was really good. NASA was doing a security background check on me and they looked into my background. They checked the police records in every city, wherever I lived. Dr. Don Thomas: They met with all my former bosses, every company that I worked for, from high school on. They would talk to my bosses and ask, what kind of worker was I? How did I treat the customers and coworkers? And did I show up to work on time? And then they went up and down the streets in all the neighborhoods, wherever I lived talking to the neighbors, and asking what kind of person was I in the neighborhood? How did I treat people? And had we had social media, we didn't have social media 40 something years ago when I was going through this but had we had social media, can any of you guess what they might have been doing? Isaiah: Stalking it? Dr. Don Thomas: They would've been looking at every single post that I had put online there. So you have to be careful today, because you never know, maybe five years, 10 years, 15 years from now, you're applying for some incredible job, maybe to go to Mars or do something else really incredible. And they may do a security background check on you, and just know they're going to be looking at everything they can find, and all your posts are there forever. So you got to be really careful. Be smart about what you post today, because you never know in the future if somebody's going to be looking into that. Andrew: So I've heard that you've had an engineering career. So my question is, how did your engineering career compare to your astronaut career? Dr. Don Thomas: Good question, Andrew. I start it off as an engineer, I became an astronaut, and for the last 15 years, I've been working in education.
