This Saturday’s launch of Space X Crew-1 will launch a farmer among the stars and to the International Space Station.
Col. Michael Hopkins grew up on a Missouri farm listening to his dad and uncle remember their days as military pilots, according to 417 Magazine. It was that and the value of hard work he learned on the farm that inspired him to enlist in the Air Force.
His experience on the farm may provide some additional assistance with the food they will be growing on the ISS. “The farm I grew up, we were actually a hog-and-cattle farm, so the crops we grew were more along the lines of alfalfa and hay and things of that nature,” Hopkins explained to Spectrum News.
Hopkins was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force in January 1992, and was selected as one of the 9 members of the 20th NASA astronaut class in July 2009. His first mission was in 2013 on a Soyuz rocket.