Astronaut Moments: Chris Williams

Long before he became a NASA astronaut, Chris Williams learned through his time in Boy Scouts a very valuable lesson….“you can do a whole lot more than you think you can.” The variety of accomplishments and skills acquired as a scout set a foundation of learning throughout Williams’ life, as he pursued a career in astrophysics, switched gears to become a medical physicist for cancer therapy, and now as an astronaut as he trained for his mission to the International Space Station.

What is said in the film

You know, I'm not entirely sure what was the initial spark for wanting to join scouts, but, my grandfather, had been involved in the Boy Scouts and when I was little, I loved the idea of the outdoors and going camping and kind of just this idea of, like, exploration. As a kid, you got the opportunity to to be a leader. So, you know, you as a middle schooler or high schooler were in charge of helping to get another group of your peers, you know, successfully through a weekend where you have to figure out what food you're going to bring. Make sure that everybody has a place to sleep, and make sure that you guys are all having fun. There's sort of a structure in scouts where you have these different ranks and all of these sort of different milestones that you can work towards and achieve.

And I think having the ability as sort of a kid to, to set these very clear goals, but also goals that are very achievable, where you can learn some really interesting things along the way, you know, merit badges. And I remember, doing an astronomy and a space exploration merit badge, but also in other areas, first aid... That's a lot of just good life skills that, you know, it kind of helps guide you towards which I thought was really fun. And I really enjoyed doing ias a kid. As a kid, I was always fascinated with space exploration and understanding how the universe works.

I wanted to be a physicist, so I wanted to study the stars, study astronomy and astrophysics. So what is astrophysics? To me, it really means using the laws and rules of physics to try to understand and explain how the universe works around you. So what I was working on for my PhD thesis was trying to build a new radio telescope that could help shed some light on the first few hundred million years of the universe's history, before the first stars and galaxies formed, so we could understand how that process happened. So this is kind of, they call it the dark ages of the universe.

I jumped on with a group, at MIT that was working on this. And, I loved working with radio telescopes and radio instrumentation, and we were actually working on building a new radio telescope out in the middle of the desert in Western Australia. The idea to kind of go out into the field, work on building a new instrument, to open up a new window on the universe just seemed really exciting to me, even though a radio telescope that may be a bunch of dishes or in the case of the experiment, I worked on a bunch of just wire antennas laid out over the ground. You can actually use math to turn those signals into an image and a picture of the sky, which is absolutely fascinating. After graduating from college, I decided I wanted to do something to really give back very directly to my community.

And there was a volunteer fire department down the street. I worked as a volunteer firefighter and EMT for a little bit. You know, I was finding a ton of satisfaction in this volunteer work that I was doing where through medicine, I was being able to really give back and help people on their worst day. So I made a little bit of change in my career, after graduate school and I, jumped into the medical physics career. I said, maybe this is something where I can take my love and my passion for physics and use it, to help people.

It was great because it had a ton of parallels to the work I'd done in astronomy. The math, for instance, that, you use to create an image from an MRI scanner is the exact same math that's used to create an image with a radio telescope. I had enough tools in my physics toolbox that even though I was using them on the human body and radiation and the interaction of radiation and cancer cells, like on the very small scale, my my education and experience with the very large scale of the universe applied really directly. One of the things that I started learning at an early age through scouting, but I think that also helped me in my career, was realizing that you can do a whole lot more than maybe you think you can. One of the things that I found the most interesting about the astronaut training and training for a mission is how varied and different the skills are that you need to learn to be successful on a mission to the International Space Station.

You know, one day I'm flying in a trainer aircraft, learning how to work together as a team with the other pilot and, and the air traffic control. The next day, I'm underwater in a spacesuit, turning bolts on a mockup of the International Space Station. So every day is different. I think that, you know, having something where you are exposed to a lot of different things in a lot of different disciplines, and you kind of prove to yourself that you can do it. I think that helps a lot in approaching a job like this, where you really have to execute at a high level in a whole bunch of different areas, gives you the confidence to really feel like you can try and you can achieve it.

I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is to be able to put all this training that I've done into practice and to do the job that I've been training for and looking forward to, you know, ever since I was a little kid. I think the view people will not be so bad either. I'm Chris Williams and I'm a NASA astronaut.

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