NARRATOR: The International Space Station's Expedition 29 is the first long duration space
flight for most of the six men on the crew.
Mike Fossum is a native of Sioux Falls, South Dakota who grew up in the small town
of McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley.
MIKE FOSSUM: We lived on the edge of town and my brothers and friends and I would just get
on our bikes and head out of town whenever we had the opportunity to, just to go explore,
to go camping, to go hunting, to do all those kinds of things and it was,
for me it was a big part of my childhood was to have the chance to get outdoors and,
and do stuff, on my own and also was hugely active
in the Boy Scouting program down in the Valley.
NARRATOR: After high school Fossum went to Texas A&M University, and joined the Corps
of Cadets just so he could get a dorm room.
But he ended up finding his calling, and became a leader in the corps while earning a Bachelor
of Science in Mechanical Engineering.
Fossum took his commission in the U.S. Air Force, and after earning a Masters
in Systems Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology he was detailed
to the Johnson Space Center in Houston to support Space Shuttle Flight Operations.
After a few years he took the advice of two fellow Air Force officers, astronauts Jerry Ross
and Ellison Onizuka, who suggested he broaden his experience.
Fossum was selected for the Air Force Test Pilot School where he become a flight test engineer,
and served in several assignments before resigning from active duty
and coming back to work for NASA in Houston.
He worked as a systems engineer on several projects,
including the prototype Space Station Crew Escape Vehicle the X-38,
while earning a Master's in Physical Science at the University of Houston Clear Lake,
before being picked as an astronaut in 1998.
Fossum completed three spacewalks on the second return-to-flight test mission in 2006,
and three more on the 2008 shuttle flight that delivered the Kibo laboratory
to the International Space Station.
MIKE FOSSUM: Well, some things are worth taking the risk.
There's a risk associated with it and that's something that you have to face.
But the kind of science that we get back in return is, is huge, and there's no other way
to do this stuff, and that's why we do it.
NARRATOR: Russian Air Force Colonel Sergei Volkov was born in the Kharkov region
of Ukraine, and was inspired to become a pilot during the time his father was a flight
instructor at a military school.
SERGEI VOLKOV: When I was three year old he took me to the airfield,
and while he flew with cadets his friends just gave me tour of the airfield and, of course,
I was able to sit in the real fighter.
And that's, so, how the dreams, dream appears, actually.
NARRATOR: The family moved to star city when Alexander Volkov became a cosmonaut.
Young Sergei grew up with famous cosmonauts as neighbors,
and when he saw how much time his father spent studying for exams while training
for his three space flights, he decided there were more minuses
than plusses to the cosmonaut's life.
So after high school he went to the Tambov Air Force Pilot School
and graduated as a pilot-engineer.
He flew as an Air Force cargo pilot for two years, but when he felt he could do more
for his country, Volkov applied to become a cosmonaut.
He was selected as a candidate in 1997,
and became the world's first second-generation space traveler in 2008
when he commanded the International Space Station's Expedition 17.
SERGEI VOLKOV: We don't know what expect when we reach Mars surface, we don't know what,
what we may expect from flying beyond the solar system, but we always wanted to know this,
and this I think is inspiring us and that's, continue to fly,
even it's really risky, risky job.
NARRATOR: Dr. Satoshi Furukawa was born and raised in Yokohama, near Tokyo,
and became interested in space flight as a very young boy.
SATOSHI FURUKAWA: When I was five years old I saw the first man's landing
on the Moon on TV and I was impressed at it.
That was one one thing.
And another thing was, I was a fan of a space hero called Ultra Seven,
which is a Japanese TV program about 40 years ago.
I was a big fan of that.That made me interested in space.
NARRATOR: He planned to go to college to study Astronomy or Space Engineering,
but when his uncle spoke to him about how rewarding he found it
to be a physician, Furukawa changed his mind.
He earned a Doctorate of Medicine at the University of Tokyo and spent five years working
as a surgeon before shifting his focus to medical research.
One night at work he saw on television that the Japanese Space Agency was looking
for new astronauts for the International Space Station and decided to try for it;
he was picked for the program in 1999, and finished his Ph.D. in Medical Science
from the University of Tokyo the next year.
In 2001 he started advanced space station training in Japan;
by mid-2004 he'd completed training as a Soyuz flight engineer in Star City,
and then moved to Houston to train with the 2004 class of NASA astronauts.
SATOSHI FURUKAWA: About a hundred years ago flying was a very dangerous thing.
I think there was a discussion at that point saying that we don't need to fly
with such risks, the ground transportations are good enough.
Widening the activity area to outer space is an instinct for human beings.
Human beings like to know the unknowns.
NARRATOR: Dan Burbank is from central Connecticut,
born in Manchester and raised in Tolland.
He became interested in space and astronomy and science when the first men landed
on the Moon just one week before his eighth birthday.
But a bigger impression was made a year later when he saw the movie "The Boatniks."
DAN BURBANK: And it was this silly story about this fellow who graduates
from the Coast Guard Academy and goes to a ship and, and has this whole series of misadventures,
but from that point on, as long as I can remember, I wanted to be in the Coast Guard,
I wanted to do search and rescue.
NARRATOR: He didn't get into the Coast Guard Academy on his first try, but after two years
as a physics major at Fairfield University he did, and learned almost immediately
that Coast Guard officers don't do search and rescue
on small boats, as he had dreamed of doing.
But helicopter pilots did, and that became his new goal.
Burbank graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and spent a year and a half assigned
to a Coast Guard cutter before going to flight school
and learning to fly planes and helicopters.
After his first tour he earned a Master's in Aeronautical Science
from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and completed the training
to become an engineering officer, and did
that job while still flying on subsequent assignments.
But he was inspired when fellow Coast Guard Officer Bruce Melnick became an astronaut,
and Burbank applied three times before being selected as an astronaut in 1996.
He was part of the 2000 shuttle mission that prepared the Zvezda module
for the station's first permanent crew, performed one spacewalk
on the 2006 shuttle mission that delivered the P3/P4 truss, and then spent three years teaching
at the Coast Guard Academy before retiring as a captain and beginning training
for his first long-duration space flight, which he likens to the work
that drew him to the Coast Guard as a boy.
DAN BURBANK: You're not going and doing a mission with the idea that you're going
to save a life, you're going to do a mission with the idea that you're going
to save the future of a species and that this is where humans belong.
DAN BURBANK: I think humans by their very nature, you know, are outward-looking
and I think it's in our destiny to leave this planet ultimately and to go other places.
NARRATOR: Russian Air Force Colonel Anton Shkaplerov was born and raised in Sevastopol,
the home of the Russian Navy's Black Sea fleet.
Though his father worked on a submarine, Shkaplerov became fascinated with space flight
as a boy and felt that the Air Force was the best path to cosmonaut,
so he joined a local aviation club.
ANTON SHKAPLEROV: So I started flying planes at 15.
At 16 I was flying them on my own.
I was flying over my hometown where I was born.
Everything was so familiar and pleasant to the eye.
So then I realized that after two years of flying,
when I was in high school, the choice was right.
NARRATOR: After high school Shkaplerov went to the Kachinsk Air Force Pilot School in Volgograd
and graduated as a pilot-engineer.
He flew MIG-29s while attending the Zukovsky Air Force Engineering School, then spent six years
as a pilot-instructor while also flying as a member
of the Sky Hussars, a flight demonstration squadron.
Shkaplerov was selected as a cosmonaut in 2003.
ANTON SHKAPLEROV: If we do not study the space, we will stalemate, and we have to move on,
we have to study new planets, new horizons, new resources, new energy resources, for example.
Maybe there is some other types of forms of life on other planets, so why not?
NARRATOR: Anatoly Ivanishin, a Lieutenant Colonel in Russia's Air Force,
is a native of Irkutsk, one of the largest cities in Siberia.
He spent a lot of time in various sports and study groups as a boy,
and although his mother says he always wanted to be a cosmonaut Ivanishin remembers wanting
to be a fighter pilot, and that's why he joined a skydiving club as a young teenager.
ANATOLY IVANISHIN: At the time it was the only sky-related activity available for me.
We didn't have at the time an opportunity in my city to fly any kind of airplanes,
so I did my first jump when I was 14.
NARRATOR: He didn't get into military pilot school on his first attempt,
so Ivanishin spent a year majoring in Aviation Design
at the Irkutsk Polytechnic Institute before starting his pilot training
at the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation School.
He graduated in 1991, the same year the Soviet Union collapsed, and although he flew the MIG-29
and SU-27 operationally he felt he wasn't getting the experience he wanted,
so he took classes at Moscow State University in economics, statistics and information theory.
He graduated in 2003 with plans for a career as a software developer,
but gave that up when he was selected as a cosmonaut that very same week.
ANATOLY IVANISHIN: Human beings are too curious creatures and they will not remain
for long time on low Earth orbit.
They will go further and further to the universe,
because to go further we will need new solutions, new materials, new spacecraft
and the International Space Station we have today is the right place to prove solutions.