Life in space: NASA astronaut speaks in Corvallis

Fire, water and the threat of exploding chemicals are an astronauts biggest worries aboard the International Space Station, where NASA astronaut Christopher Cassidy spent March to September last year.

The experience was the latest in his almost a decade of space flight for NASA, and Cassidy shared some of the highlights Monday with an audience of medical personnel in a conference room at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center.

Cassidy, 45, a former Navy SEAL, was keeping a promise to his uncle, Bill Monscko of Monmouth, when he spoke in the morning to local students at Ash Creek Elementary School in Monmouth about his time in space, and also addressed the group from Samaritans Graduate Medical Education program in the afternoon.

With a witty, self-deprecating air, Cassidy, 45, said he took a roundabout route to membership in two of the nations most elite groups: He applied to the Navy SEALs program at 21, after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md.

Yes, he said, the training at the SEALs facility on Coronado Island off San Diego and at the SEALs facility in Norfolk, Va., was tough but it was the down time that was brutal.

SEAL doesnt stand so much for Sea, Air and Land as it does for Sleep, Eat and Lay around.

He applied to become an astronaut, and in May 2004 reported to NASAs facilities in Houston for rigorous training.

He flew the Space Shuttle Endeavor to the space station July 15-31 in 2009 and performed three space walks, totalling 18 hours and five minutes.

It was during a space walk, he said, that he actually got nervous.

You have a box in your hands labeled 001, and you know that if something goes wrong, the space station isnt going to work right. Never mind the whole problem of what would happen if you let go and float off into space. The main preventative strategy there, he said, is hang on.

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Life in space: NASA astronaut speaks in Corvallis