Meet my mate Bob

2025 December 12th

I’m a bit of a collector of professions. The first thing I ever qualified in that permitted me to earn money was as a lifeguard when I was 14. Since then I’ve added canoeing instructor - long lapsed now along with the Royal Lifesaving Society qualification. Then I got an Engineering degree when I was 22 and became a Chartered Engineer at 25. After that I’ve become a professional pilot, a qualified martial arts instructor, and a published author. I’ve been qualified to teach in universities for a few decades, and as I wrote last month I’m now a full Professor.

The one I’m most proud of however, is that I’m a Test Pilot. This is a profession rather misreported in the popular media and certainly anybody who behaved like Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in the second Top Gun movie would not last five minutes. What we are is pilots with enough ability to safely fly an aeroplane, whilst also carrying out experiments or evaluations within the flight. That clearly did include quite a lot of specialist training and experience, and en-route I might have taken a few risks, but as far as possible, very carefully calculated and managed ones.

Like a lot of test pilots, I got into this with a personal subtext of hoping this could lead to what I really wanted to do - become an astronaut. When I was a student back in the 1980s and 1990s I already knew that this was my ambition, and I studied what at that time seemed to be needed. That was: stay fit and healthy, get an engineering or science first degree then a PhD in an experimental field, learn French and Russian, learn to fly, and ideally get experience of test flying. So, I set out to do all of those things - with variable success (I’ve pretty much forgotten all my Russian, but the French is still okay). Cutting to the punchline first, yes I did get one shot at applying for astronaut, with the European Space Agency in 2020; it took them, 9 months to reject me, so I can’t have been too bad, but nonetheless, I failed. Whilst I’m a bit grumpy about the failure (although in retrospect, if I’d got further through the astronaut selection, I suspect that the medicals would have picked up my cancer earlier, and booted me out anyhow), I have absolutely no regrets about the journey. Absolutely everything I’ve done en-route to this has been worthwhile and usually enjoyable.

Which brings me back to a story. My logbook says that the first flight I ever commanded as a test pilot was on September 29th 1998 when I was evaluating the stalling characteristics of an aeroplane type that had had an unexplained fatal accident. About three years later, I was accepted into the main “club” for Test Pilots, the California based Society of Experimental Test Pilots, or SETP. That’s a very big deal, as the Society’s entry requirements are independent and very exacting, also that it’s a club which is both prestigious and very supportive of its members. So I decided I was going to save up and get myself to SETP’s big annual conference in Los Angeles. That I did, and in September 2003 I attended for my first time the SETP Annual Symposium and Banquet in Anaheim.

I remember that conference very well, for many reasons - I got to talk to so many brilliant people from all over the world, and learned huge amounts. But one brief incident particularly sticks in my mind.

It was the start of day 2; the conference started with breakfast about 7:30 and I got there on time, and loaded up a plate with doughnuts and coffee (this was America after all!), then sat down at an empty table to enjoy that and take in what was going on. A few minutes later a middle aged American introduced himself as Rick, and asked if he could join me. I was glad of the company and were enjoying a chat about how the conference was going, and what were likely to be the most interesting sessions that day. He was obviously ex-military and knew quite a lot about spaceflight, but that described half the people in the room. We were basically two colleagues chewing the fat.

Then another middle aged American came and tapped my new friend on the shoulder. He turned around. 22 years later I remember every word of the next short conversation.

“Hello Bob, great to see you”.

(Turned to me)

“Guy, meet my old mate Bob Crippen, he commanded me on my first Shuttle mission”.

I was having breakfast with Captain Rick Hauck, pilot of one, and commander of two more Space Shuttle launches, and Bob Crippen, pilot of the first ever Space Shuttle launch, and commander of three more after that.

On April 14th 1981, aged ten, I had been sat cross-legged in a a primary school hall watching on our black and white “school television” the first ever launch into space of NASA’s Space Shuttle. Bob had been strapped into that space shuttle as the pilot (actually co-pilot, but astronauts would never admit to being a co-pilot, so they are commander and pilot, instead of pilot and co-pilot). I couldn’t bring myself to call him Bob. “Sir” seemed much more appropriate.

But let’s talk about inspiration. Those two men have inspired thousands of people to pursue their best selves, personally and professionally - it is of-course part of the job of an astronaut. I’m very privileged to have known them however briefly, and be inspired in person.

How about in Cancer? Well unlike being an astronaut, nobody applies to have Cancer. It’s totally understandable why anybody would just want to concentrate upon their treatment, and hopefully recovery and after that try and achieve a quiet life. I would never judge anybody adversely for that. Yet, at the same time there are people who have become incredibly inspiring in the way they’ve used their cancer diagnoses not just to change their own lives, but other people’s too. Look at what Sir Chris Hoy has done to turn the personal tragedy of his terminal prostate cancer diagnosis into an education mission, or the Princess of Wales to spread the word about the need for care and consideration towards people who have, or have had, cancer. And less well known people I’ve found at-least as inspiring: People like Tony Collier, runner, campaigner, terminal cancer patient, and administrator of a massively supportive Facebook group for prostate cancer patients and their families who has done a huge amount; Floella Benjamin, former children’s TV personality and now a campaigner for prostate cancer awareness in black men, and patron of Beating Bowel Cancer. People like this inspire me, and are inspiring many other people - and no space suit required.

So let me finish with a challenge to anybody reading this. Aside from all of the pressures on your own life, which are real, and which you have to deal with - do you do things, and live a life, that would inspire others? I think that the best test is to ask yourself: if teenage you could see adult you, would they have found you inspiring? Would they regard you as a role model? If they wouldn’t, there’s still time!

My deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Astronaut Rick Hauck, who died last month of Parkinsons Disease, at the age of 84.

P.S. Latest blood test results are “unremarkable”, PSA<0.01. I continue to fight the good fight. Weight loss? - less successful.