Meet an astronaut's astronaut: Scott Parazynski

(To the tune of the opening of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.) You know Aldren and Armstrong, Young and Crippen, Shepard and Glenn, and Cernan and Grissom; but do you know the most accomplished astronaut of all? Probably not. If you have ever heard the name of Dr. Scott Parazynski, it was probably in passing on a newscast or a space shuttle story you read in the paper. Chances are that you probably glossed over his name and lost it in the ethereal realm of hundreds of shuttle astronaut names. He is one of more than 500 people who have flown in space, and unless you’re a space nut, you’d probably walk right by him on the street and never know the amazing things he has accomplished in his life on and above the ground. I have the privilege of calling Parazynski a friend. Actually, most everyone who meets him becomes a friend. I can’t see too many people being an enemy. That’s just who Scott Parazynski is. He is friendly, engaging and very down-to-earth. On top of that, he is tall, (mostly) blond and handsome. Oh, and he is incredibly smart. The “Dr.” in his title isn’t just because he earned his PhD. He is a medical doctor and currently serves as chief technology officer and chief medical officer at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute here in Houston. His lists of awards and accomplishments are far too numerous to fit in this space. His NASA biographical data sheet is three pages long. Parazynski is what you would call an astronaut’s astronaut. Parazynski has flown in space five times, conducted seven space walks and spent time on the International Space Station and the Russian Mir space station. He was the medical doctor who conducted all the tests on John Glenn on his celebrated return to space. The first time I spoke with Parazynski, he told me that Glenn (who hates needles) had become so weary of blood draws that he began calling him Count Parazynscula. Among his earthly accomplishments, he is a pilot and an avid mountaineer who has summited major mountains in the Alaska Range, the Cascades, the Rockies, the Andes and the Himalayas. His summits include Cerro Aconcagua (22,841 feet above sea level) and 53 of Colorado’s famed 14ers (peaks over 14,000 feet). On May 20, 2009, he became the first astronaut to stand on top of the world when he climbed to the top of Mount Everest. Parazynski was originally supposed to stay aboard Mir, but his 6-foot 2-inch height made him too tall for the Russian Soyuz spacecraft (hence his call sign of Too Tall Parazynski). He is one of the world’s leading experts on the effects of long-term space flight on the human body. He invented some of the exercise equipment astronauts use to keep their bones and muscles from atrophying during long flights. My first contact with Parazynski came in 2001 when I did a telephone interview with him, Jeff Ashby and Kent Rominger, the three of seven astronauts onboard Endeavour for the STS-100 mission with Colorado ties. Rominger and Ashby were born and raised there and Parazynski, though born in Arkansas, considers Evergreen, Colo., one of his hometowns. I dubbed the flight the “Colorado Flight” because that is the highest number of Coloradans on one shuttle flight. That, and there were a number of projects and equipment on the flight made in the Centennial State. A few years ago we became Facebook friends and have corresponded a few times on the website. Last week, 10 years after that first phone call, I got to meet Parazynski in person when he was the guest astronaut at Space Center Houston. He gave two talks in the Blast Off Theater, where I took several pictures and lots of notes. Prior to his first talk, I ran into him in the hallway and he was gracious enough to visit with me and pose for a picture together. His talks were fascinating, at least to me, a handful of fellow space geeks and several school children on a field trip. He put things in a perspective that the children would understand, so he got a few laughs when he referred to his “orange pumpkin suit” and having “superhuman strength” in space. For all the clean-cut, straight-laced profiles of astronauts, the 50-year-old adventurer/explorer is really a kid at heart. “On launch morning it’s a lot like being a kid on Christmas morning,” he said. He began his talks by showing a picture of him as a 5-year-old boy holding a toy rocket in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. He joked about flying in the mid-deck of the shuttle as “flying coach” and said it is an amazing experience going from three times your bodyweight to weightlessness within a few short minutes during launch. “You have a smile on your face every second you’re up there,” he said. In describing weightlessness, he compared it to being an Olympic gymnast. “There is no up, down, left, right, forward or backward in space,” he said. He called the last spacewalk on his last flight the “Apollo 13 moment” of the shuttle era. One of the giant solar panels was being unfurled when a cable snapped, creating a huge rip that put both the station and the shuttle in danger. That’s when Dr. Parazynski was called on to perform the riskiest surgery of his career. Using special equipment and hoisted on the end of the station’s robotic arm, Parazynski risked electrocution and other dangers to repair and save the solar panel. “We either had to fix this thing in some way or throw away a billion-dollar piece of technology,” he said. It would be easy to write a book about Parazynski and his incredible career, but there simply isn’t enough time or space here to do that. I do hope you realize now what a remarkable man he is, even if his funny-sounding name escapes your memory within minutes of reading this.