Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Submariner in Space?

I was looking at technology news this evening and ran across a piece of local RI interest relating to NASA doing tours of schools nationwide to promote science, technology and math. The NASA representative that spoke to the local RI schools was Navy Cmdr. Stephen Bowen a MA native and the first Submariner to become an Astronaut. The Commander has quite an impressive career so far, here's the link to his bio at NASA. He also appears to be putting his nuke quals to work there as well.

Navy Cmdr. Stephen Bowen (Source: NASA)

USS Parche (SSN 683), USS POGY (SSN 647), USS Augusta (SSN 710) and the Pre-Comm Unit for the Virginia (SSN 774) for a total of 14 years in the Submarine Service before becoming a Mission Specialist at NASA.

I have to say those gold Dolphins do make the NASA uniform look good.

3 comments:

bothenook said...

isn't that something? i seem to remember working on the parche as a shift test engineer when he was onboard. he looked a lot younger then! the junior officers on parche were a smart bunch.

we had an XO on seawolf that had been trying to get into the NASA program for years. he was pretty damned switched on too. if i recall, he ended up as the decomm skipper of at least 2 and maybe as many as 3 boats at mare island when we were killing 594's and 637's wholesale.

Lubber's Line said...

Bo, To me the submarine service is a relatively small community consisting of people of above average intelligence. Once in a while you get to see a shipmate and hot runner make the news. Cmdr. Bowen seems to be reaching for new heights in his career.

Someone I remember serving with that made the news was Scott Waddle. He was on the Precomm Unit for the Alabama when I was there. Although Cmdr. Waddle's notoriety is from the tragic circumstances in Feb 2001 surrounding the USS Greeneville and the Ehime Maru.

Just this average joe's observations.

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