Astronaut’s experience ranges from submarine duty to back-to-back space shuttle missions

From the depths of the ocean to orbiting around the Earth, astronaut Capt. Stephen Bowen has seen it all — and says the two are not all that different.
Bowen is a Cohasset, Massachusetts, native who attended the U.S. Naval Academy and received a master of science in ocean engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in 1993.
After several Navy assignments, Bowen became the first submarine officer selected by NASA as a mission specialist in July 2000.
Bowen is a veteran of three spaceflights: STS-126 in 2008 aboard Endeavour; STS-132 on Atlantis in 2010; and STS-133 in 2011, the final mission for the Space Shuttle Discovery.
He is the only astronaut to fly back-to-back missions.
Bowen logged a total of 40 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes and 37 seconds in space. That includes 47 hours and 18 minutes of extravehicular activity in seven spacewalks. Bowen received the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, three Navy Commendation medals, two Navy Achievement medals and other service awards.
He took a few minutes Thursday at Conrad Deepwater in Amelia to answer a few questions about space.
—What is space like?
“It’s absolutely amazing as you can imagine. Certain things never get old. Looking at the Earth from space just never gets old. Floating never gets old. … Being in space, living in space, is a lot like everywhere else except you get to float around all the time and you get this incredible view of planet Earth.”
—How did you join the space program? Was it a childhood dream?
“A lot of people assume there’s some career track or some path that you should be on to become an astronaut when in reality we have a wide range of people in the office, everything from medical doctors to teachers to engineers to pilots, a veterinarian.
“Basically I did nothing to preclude being an astronaut, but I never really planned on it. I was working my way through the submarine force.
“Nobody in the office, I think, feels they deserve to be an astronaut. Everybody feels they’re fortunate because the selection rate is about .08 percent of the qualified applicants are ever selected. My selection year, I think we had 6,000 applicants and they selected 17. That was actually one of the higher years.”
—What is the difference between working on a submarine and in space?
“The amazing thing is how similar they are … the big difference is that you’re floating. The view is so much better. The food is not nearly as good as on a submarine. But, really, you’re keeping an uninhabitable environment on the outside and maintaining a habitable environment on the inside.
“Obviously the missions are different. The research we do on space station is really going forward and advancing the knowledge of mankind. Everything we learn up there comes back down here and makes life better here on Earth.
“The missions are different. A lot of the equipment is similar. I think there’s more personal space on the Space Station than a submarine.”