Training started early for new NASA astronaut from Seattle
Jun 19, 2013, 12:15 PM | Updated: 12:58 pm
Going into space would be the realization of a life-long dream for the Spokane woman and U.S. Army Major. She can't remember when she wanted to do anything else. (Photo courtesy NASA)
(Photo courtesy NASA)
Major Anne C. McClain had already missed one call while she was at work on June 6. She wasn’t going to miss another. She was waiting to find out if she would become an astronaut.
“I envisioned myself running around and screaming, and I think what I really did was drop to my knees and stopped breathing,” McClain told The Morning News on KIRO Radio 97.3 FM.
When she got word two-and-half hours after her first missed call, that she would train to go into outer space, it was like an out of body experience. “It was just so overwhelming.”
McClain said she prepared herself for the negative news, but hadn’t prepared herself for hearing that she would be selected.
Going into space would be the realization of a life-long dream for the Spokane woman and U.S. Army Major. She can’t remember when she wanted to do anything else.
When McClain was about 5 years old she wrote a book in school about how she wanted to be an astronaut. And the idea, she believes was probably planted in her head when she was a toddler, watching one of the first space shuttle launches on TV.
McClain says just outside the gates of Seattle’s Pacific Science Center she would test herself on the rides of the Fun Forest.
“I used to try and tough it out and be better than my brother,” she said. “I have faith in Seattle – that they prepared me for this.”
At West Point, McClain would have majored in space travel had that been an option. But now she’ll have to settle for two-year training program NASA set up for astronaut candidates. If candidates successfully complete that program then they’re admitted to the Astronaut Corps in about two years.
Where will McClain head after her training? She would definitely go to Mars.
“Whatever NASA needs me to do, I’m very willing to do,” she said. “I think in the next 10 or 20 or 30 years humans are going to go where humans have never been and NASA is going to accomplish feats that they’ve never accomplished. Whatever role I can play in those accomplishments – I’m just so thrilled to be a part of it.”
