>> Despite their diverse backgrounds,
there's a common trait among the crewmembers
of the International Space Station's Expedition 34,
a desire to fly and to explore the unknown.
Retired Air Force Colonel Kevin Ford is a product
of Northeastern Indiana, the youngest of six kids was born
in Portland, raised in Montpelier
and graduated high school in Hartford City.
He was 14 when his oldest brother gave him his first ride
in a small plane and Ford was hooked on flying.
>> I started working a grocery store,
I happened to have a grocer in my town who had his own airplane
and so he was really willing to give me job,
give me all the hours I needed to pay for flying lessons.
>> Ford already had his pilot's license
when he finished high school and went to Notre Dame
as an Air Force ROTC student.
He graduated with a Bachelor's of Science
and Aerospace Engineering, did his Air Force pilot training
at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi and was assigned
to an F15 squadron in Germany.
>> It was '84 to '87 so kind of the height
of the Cold War kind of time.
Never saw myself in the future flying in a Soyuz
at that point, I'll tell you that.
>> Then it was a fighter interceptor squadron in Iceland,
while finishing his Master of Science Degree
in International Relations from Troy State,
before being selected for the Air Force Test Pilot School.
Ford earned a Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering
at the University of Florida while flying as a test pilot
at Eglin Air Force Base and then he took a three year assignment
to complete a doctorate in astronautical engineering
from the Air Force Institute of Technology.
He served as an instructor
at the Air Force Test Pilot School before being selected
as an astronaut in 2000 and did a tour as NASA's Director
of Operations in Star City,
Russia before making his first trip
to the International Space Station as the pilot
on a 2009 shuttle supply flight during Expedition 20.
Ford is a supporter of robotic exploration beyond low
earth orbit.
>> But I think the human, the emotional connection comes
about because we see ourselves out there, we project ourselves
out there and we really want to go explore on our how,
have a look with our own eyes.
>> Russian Air Force Colonel Oleg Novitskiy is from Chervyen,
a small town near Minsk in what is now the Republic of Belarus.
Flying in space was his childhood dream.
[ Foreign language ]
>> When I was a kid, I remember looking into the dark sky
with stars and it was like a magnet.
After I grew up, I realized that it's not as easy
to become a cosmonaut so I picked the shortest route.
>> That meant becoming a military pilot.
After high school, he entered the [Foreign name] Military
Pilot School but when the military reformed itself
after the fall of the Soviet Union,
he moved to the Kachin Flight School and graduated
with a specialization in command tactical aviation.
[ Foreign language ]
>> After that, I also studied to work with military machinery
which took about one year and in 1995, I was assigned to work
in the City of [Foreign name]
where I started working as a military pilot.
>> Over the years, Novitskiy was an active duty pilot and rose
to become the deputy commander of a squadron based
in the north Caucasus.
He studied military unit management
at the [Foreign name] Air Force Academy before serving
as commander of an attack air squadron and was selected
to begin cosmonaut training in 2007.
He was serving as the Russian Space Agency's Director
of Operations in Houston when he was selected
for his first flight.
[ Foreign language ]
>> I think throughout our entire flight, we accumulate experience
and knowledge just like athletes who train to break a record
so we are preparing and I hope that in the future,
we will perform a long duration space flight hopefully to Mars.
>> Russian Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Evgeny Tarelkin is the
son of a military pilot and a military doctor.
He was born in [Foreign name] in the Chita Region
in Southeastern Siberia but lived all over the country.
In his desire to become a pilot, he made his first parachute jump
at the age of 11 despite not weighing enough
to make the system work.
>> I added sand to my pockets, to my boots and so I did come
to weight 50 kilos so I went ahead and I jumped.
>> Tarelkin graduated from high school in [Foreign name],
near Star City, spent time at a military academy
in [Foreign name] and graduated
from the [Foreign name] Air Force Pilot School
and then the Yuri Gagarin Military Academy
with a specialty in air transport operations
and air traffic management.
His first job was at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center
as a flight test engineer, training cosmonauts
in survival skills and as luck would have it, parachuting.
Being that close
to the cosmonauts got him thinking I could do that.
>> I thought I was ready, I felt prepared,
I felt I had the knowledge and I felt
that maybe I'd make more contribution
as part of cosmonaut corp.
>> After almost four years training cosmonauts,
including zero gravity training in aircraft and under water,
Tarelkin was selected to join the cosmonaut core himself
in 2003 and take on a new role in the effort
to explore beyond earth orbit.
>> This low earth orbit stage is really necessary but we need
to look forward and to think about flying to stars,
to other planets, maybe meet our alien brothers there.
Who knows?
>> Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield was
born in Sarnia, Ontario and grew up there and on a farm
in Milton, near Toronto.
The space race had captured his imagination by the time he was 9
and watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and Hadfield thought
to himself, I'm going to grow up to be something, why not that.
>> But then when I look around I'm thinking,
I'm a 9-year-old kid and I'm a Canadian, what are my odds?
Not very good but I thought well, you know,
up until yesterday, people couldn't even go and walk
on the moon and now they can so maybe I can too.
And so I started getting ready that night basically, started,
you know, what do I need to do next?
>> Hadfield got into advanced courses in school
and on the academic track that led to college
but he also became a ski instructor while learning how
to fly as a member of Canada's Air Cadets.
>> They teach them a bunch of technical things,
they teach them self-discipline, they give them levels
of responsibility that they might not get otherwise
as teenagers.
And in my case, I spent one summer learning
to be a glider pilot and getting my glider pilot's license.
And right at the age of 16, I became a powered pilot.
>> Hadfield joined the Canadian Armed Forces right
out of high school and earned a Bachelor's
in Mechanical Engineering from the Royal Military College.
After jet training, he flew the Canadian version of the F18
for NORAD, attended the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School
and served as an exchange officer with the U.S. Navy
at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station,
while earning a Master's in Aviation Systems
from the University of Tennessee.
Hadfield was selected as an astronaut
by the Canadian Space Agency in 1992 and assigned
to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
On his first space flight, the 1995 shuttle mission
that delivered a docking module to the Mir Space Station,
he became the first Canadian
to operate the shuttle's [inaudible] arm on orbit.
After serving as chief astronaut for CSA,
he made his second flight on the 2001 shuttle mission
that delivered [inaudible] arm two
to the International Space Station
and he performed two space walks, the first ever made
by a Canadian astronaut.
Hadfield served as NASA's Direction of Operations
in Star City, Russia, retired from the Canadian Air Force
as colonel and then served in a variety of roles
within NASA's astronaut office before getting this assignment
to support the research onboard the International Space Station.
>> And it is our big proving ground, it's our test track
for building spaceships in the future
and it is therefore the diving board,
the launching board that's going to allow us
to confidently go further away from earth.
>> Retired Russian Air Force Colonel Roman Romanenko was born
in Shchyolkovo, near Moscow, and grew up in Star City
at the center of the cosmonaut community.
His father, Cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko flew three times
before his son graduated from high school so the idea
of being a cosmonaut wasn't so romantic to the son.
>> Whenever went on a trip or on a picnic, a business trip,
I was always with my dad and I would just always be in contact
with cosmonauts and I thought it would be always normal
to be with them.
There was nothing special about it for me.
>> But he did want to be a military pilot
so after high school, Romanenko followed his father
into the Air Force.
He graduated from the Suvorov Military School in Leningrad
and the Chernigov Higher Military School of Pilots.
But after the fall of the Soviet Union,
young air force pilots had fewer opportunities to fly fighters,
Romanenko found himself copiloting cargo transports
and ferrying cosmonauts to their launch site in Kazakhstan.
>> [Inaudible] weren't allowed me to fly a lot
and so I started thinking about changing jobs,
maybe find something related to that and right at that moment,
I was told that they're looking for applicants
to join the cosmonauts and I thought why not?
I give it a try as well.
>> Romanenko was selected as a cosmonaut candidate in 1997
and made his first space flight in 2009,
commanding the Soyuz Spacecraft that brought he
and two crew mates to the International Space Station
to expand its crew to six for the first time on Expedition 20.
Romanenko has also served as deputy commander
of Russia's Cosmonaut Core while his nation has worked
with its international partners
to get ready for the next journey.
>> If everything is going well, if we're able
to successfully follow the program, the flight program,
even while orbiting earth with this rich experience,
we'll be able to reach other planets
as well with no problems.
>> Dr. Tom Marshburn is a native of Statesville, North Carolina,
the seventh of seven children
who loved working and playing outdoors.
He remembers being excited to watch the first moon walk
because it fed into his love of adventure.
>> Oh, I [inaudible], it was in high school that I thought,
you know, the space program is interesting to me
and specifically, the space program that got me
into the technical field and I had to switch completely.
I concentrated on math science and fell in love
with the physics classes.
>> After high school in Atlanta, he earned his Bachelor's
in physics from Davidson College and a Master's in physics
from the University of Virginia but he also came to understand
that his talents might lie more in working with people.
>> I actually came down to the Johnson Space Center
and started knocking doors, asking for a job.
After I received my Master's Degree, one of the doctors
that worked here said, you ought
to get a medical degree 'cause NASA's going
to need doctors someday, so I did.
>> Marshburn earned a doctor of medicine at Wake Forest,
trained as an emergency room physician in Toledo,
Ohio and then worked in an ER in Seattle before being accepted
in the first class of NASA's space medicine fellowship
program to train as a flight surgeon.
In that role for NASA, Marshburn has worked
in the shuttle program in Star City,
Russia for NASA personnel assigned as part
of the International Space Station Program
and as lead flight surgeon for shuttle and station crews.
He was selected as an astronaut in 2004
and made his first space flight
on a 2009 space shuttle mission during
which he made three space walks to complete the construction
of the [inaudible] Laboratory Complex
and get the International Space Station in shape for its mission
as a test bed that will help human beings prepare
for the next stage of space exploration.
>> You'd have to build something and then test it
out over a long period of time,
well that's what the space station is
and with the Russian technology, with a lot of technology,
the international partners have come up, we're able to find
out how we can maintain these things we call people
for a long period of time in space.