CONOR E. RALPH/The New York Times/Redux

Mark Kelly, fifty-nine, is the junior U.S. senator from Arizona. Previously he was a NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy pilot. He was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on May 6, 2023. He spoke to Esquire from his office in Washington, D.C.

What have I learned from being a twin? Take risksbecause you have a ready supply of spare parts.

Twins have weird habits with each other. My brother and I have shaken hands once in our lives. The only time we ever did was when he got back from space and there was a camera there, specifically to capture the moment.

The wildest job Ive had is the United States Senate.

Some of my other jobs, whether it was flying airplanes in the Navy or fifteen years at NASA, were about science, data, and facts. On Capitol Hill, those are somewhat fluid concepts. Sometimes you see people just make some shit up. Thats surprising. In the United States Senate, people take this job seriously. People from both sides of the aisle try to stick with reality and facts. But occasionally, that gets pushed aside for political purposes.

I grew up Catholic. Had to go to Sunday school, for some reason, on Wednesdays.

My mom was the first woman to be a police officer in West Orange, New Jersey. She worked in a jail before that, as a guard. She was a trailblazer. She taught my brother and me about hard work and doing something thats really outside your comfort zone.

Mark Kelly and his twin brother, Scott, with their mother in the 1960s.

When I was in the ninth grade, I bought myself a stereo system and collected a bunch of albums. I had a lot of Elton John. Yeah, I think I liked Rocket Man.

I always felt like there was mandatory public service for me. My grandfather served in World War II in the Pacific. My other grandfather served in the Merchant Marine in the Atlantic during World War II. My dad was in the 82nd Airborne. I felt like it was my obligation to serve our country. It worked well with my goals. I wanted to fly off an aircraft carrier, and I also wanted to be an astronaut.

I flew thirty-nine combat missions over Iraq and Kuwait. After the first couple dozen of them, even though youre being shot at, you get used to it. But youre still wringing your hands over landing on the aircraft carrier at 3:00 in the morning. If you bolterif the hook on your airplane doesnt grab the wireyouve got to go around. Now a lot of people are watching. If you dont get aboard after two or three tries, youve got to go to the tanker to refuel. Now youre really starting to get stressed.

Ive got fifty-four days in space. I did make four trips to the space station. I was the last commander of the space shuttle Endeavour. I brought up whats arguably the most valuable payload ever floated in the space shuttle: It was the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on my last flight.

My third flight, we brought up toilet parts. You dont want the toilet to break in space. Not a good situation.

People dont realize that physiologically being in space is hard on you as a person. You lose blood volume. The fluid shifts in your body because of the lack of gravity. You just start to urinate out plasma volume. You come back very dehydrated. It messes up your neuro-vestibular system. Things that are pretty simple on earth become hard. Theres also a reasonable chance the whole things just going to blow up on you at liftoff.

The most rewarding thing about being in space is that youre doing something thats very technically challenging. A large team of people is trying to work together to accomplish some challenging goals for our country. Youve prepared for something for years. When it goes well and you come back safely and youve got everything done, its very rewarding.

We live on an island in our solar system. We dont have any other place to go. We need to take care of this planet because its the only one weve got.

Mark Kelly, right, and his brother, Scott, left, in Phoenix in November 2022.

At a very basic level, humans are explorers. We want to see whats over the next hill. We want to see whats across the ocean. We want to see whats on the surface of the moon. When we do that, we learn more about ourselves, but we also wind up developing significant technology that drives our economy for decades. From an economic standpoint, even though its an up-front investment and these things cost money, NASA is one of the great values for the U.S. taxpayer, because the country gets a very good return on that investment.

The Martian is the best movie about being in space.

Its likely that theres other life out there. Whether its intelligent life that travels around its own solar system or around the galaxy, at this point theres no evidence of that. Not that I can tell you, anyway.

Mark Kelly aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour prior to a simulated launch countdown in November 2001.

We have gun laws like no other country on the planet. Its crazy that we dont do background checks for all gun sales. Thats just something that most Americans think is the right thing to do. We give access to the most powerful weaponsweapons that are designed for the military, designed to kill a lot of people in a short period of timeto just about anybody. That doesnt make a lot of sense to me. We should have higher standards to own these kinds of firearms.

Im a believer in the Second Amendment. Im a gun owner myself. But we, as a country, have let this thing get out of control. Thats why we have mass shooting after mass shooting.

I wouldnt say Ive forgiven the guy who shot my wife Gabby [Giffords] or would ever forgive him for what he did. He murdered six people, including a nine-year-old girl. Shot Gabby in the head. Shot twelve other individuals, some multiple times. Horrific. But unless somebody asks me about it, I dont spend any time thinking about him or thinking about this. Im a lot like my wifemove ahead, move ahead. Thats not something that I spend any time on.

After what happened to Gabby and that she survived and thought about coming back, I often think theres a greater purpose in the world for certain people. That things dont just always happen by accident.

Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly on the campaign trail in Arizona in November 2022. Kelly was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2020 in a special election following the death of Senator John McCain. He was reelected to a full term in 2022.

When we finally send somebody to Mars, its probably a pretty good chance itll be somebody with a lot of experience but whos a little bit older. The reason is that the radiation dose is really high. The one way you can mitigate that is you send somebody whos older, because they have less time left to get cancer from the radiation and die from it. Theyre going to die from something else first. When we send somebody, its not going to be like Neil Armstrong at thirty-nine years old or Buzz Aldrin at thirty-nine. Itll probably be some guy around my age, sixty.

I could do that mission right now, and I would love toif it wasnt one-way. Id like to come back.

What Ive learned being on the Aging Committee are these programs, whether its Meals on Wheels or Medicare prescription-drug programs, are for people who really need them. The bill that the House passed would take away Meals on Wheels from a million seniors. Its a horrible thing to do to people.

Senator Mark Kelly at the Arizona Science Center in April 2023.

I only think about running for president when somebody like you asks that question, then Ill go on to the next thing I have to do, which is another fifty things today.

More than anything else from being a parent, I learned patience.

Window seat or aisle? I got to see this earth from space for fifty-four days. Aisle seat.

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What I've Learned: Senator Mark Kelly on Space Travel, Wife Gabby Giffords, and Gun Reform - Esquire