You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world.
It was a unique childhood, to say the least. My father was born in Patiala to refugee parents and was a part of the Indian Air Force. The talented few amongst the Air Force pilots are made test pilots. Test pilots are best suited to look at the space...
Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.
Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.
And so, I was not a military test pilot, but as soon as NASA expressed an interest in flying scientists and people who were not military test pilots, that was an epiphany that just came like a stroke of lightning.
We have never lost a crew member on the space station, but of course, the Columbia accident. I was - I'd already been an astronaut for a decade when the crew of Columbia was killed. And I went through test pilot school. Rick Husband and I were out at...
The pilots I did test for, I was the only black actor testing against white actors for parts that were written white.
On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.
When a test pilot comes off a flight, there is typically another pilot who is going to take it up, and he believes in the debriefing. You don't keep something to yourself.
Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business.
I tested for a couple of pilots, but they said I was too tall.
Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have...
Each test pilot I know considers him, or herself, now that there are women, to be the very best. It's very demeaning to step down the ladder once in a while.
Chuck Yeager: [NASA recruiters are talking to test pilots] You need lab rabbits. Recruiter: Sorry, I didn't get that. Chuck Yeager: I said you need lab rabbits to curl up in your damn capsule. With its heart going "pitter-patter". And a wire up the k...
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The first American into space is not going to be a chimpanzee. I want test pilots!
I didn't get my first pilot that I screen-tested for, and I really thought it was the end of the world. But it's fine, you know, you move on to something else.
Glennis Yeager: They don't spend a god-damned thing teaching you how to be the fearless wife of a fearless test pilot.
In between shooting for 'Awake,' I was attempting to have my own pilot season. The audition for 'Anger Management' actually came during a week that I was already testing for a couple other shows and we weren't really letting any other shows into the ...
As a kid, I always wanted to be lots of things. I was a Walter Mitty type. I wanted to be in the French Foreign Legion, a detective, a doctor, a test pilot with a scarf, a fisherman who hauled in a tremendous marlin after a 12-hour fight.
Later, after flying in the Navy for four or five years, spending some time on an aircraft carrier, I applied to and was accepted in a program where I went to graduate school first and then to the Naval Test Pilots School.
We were flying on a winged vehicle that would do reentry different than we had ever done before. So all of those were firsts. Test pilots truly love firsts.
