Chris Cassidy has never diagrammed a Super Bowl-winning scheme like Bill Belichick, but as both a Navy SEAL and NASA astronaut, he has helped create many “touchdowns” that history will forever remember. Each of his game-winning drives were a matter of life and death, and the decorated captain led his teams to victory each and every mission.
His résumé includes serving 11 years as a U.S. Navy SEAL, with two deployments in both Afghanistan and the Mediterranean. Cassidy also served as SEAL platoon commander at SEAL Team Three in California.
As an astronaut, Cassidy became the 500th person in history to fly into space, touching down on three separate missions. He served as mission specialist aboard the Endeavor in 2009 and flown on missions in 2013 and 2020 aboard Soyuz.
Cassidy is famous for his most challenging mission in 2013, while conducting a spacewalk with partner Luca Parmitano, was forced to shut down a mission when water began filling his partner’s helmet. Cassidy’s quick decision making helped avert a catastrophic, possibly fatal, outcome.
He even found time to finish one of the most grueling athletic challenges, completing the Ironman triathlon in 2014 – a feat which possibly fares no greater than the third most impressive for this American hero.
Yet his most critical quick-thinking decision — the one that created his opportunities for both Annapolis and NASA, and perhaps changed the course of history for the United States Space program, was made at a then-unassuming split-second moment as a high school senior.
With his Naval Academy application process gone horribly wrong and a military career in question, Cassidy worked his way into receiving a game-changing ultimatum with an answer that couldn’t wait till the next day: Join right this moment or lose this opportunity forever. Cassidy accepted and the rest is history.
“In hindsight, scratching and clawing to get into the Academy set the stage for all the things I’ve been able to do,” Cassidy says. “There’s always key moments in your life when you don’t know what that huge inflection point in your life may come from. [If I hadn’t said yes], I would never have learned about the SEALs, and I certainly would never have met the first SEAL astronaut, Bill Shepherd.”
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Karen Nyberg/Nasa
Do All You Can to Control Your Destiny
In high school, I had no idea what Navy SEALs were — or astronauts for that matter. I do remember the Challenger, but that was stuff other people did — it was never on my radar. For me, at that moment, I had to figure out how to pay for college.
I realized service academies were free, but I couldn’t get in right away — I had to scratch and claw my way in. The admission process for any service academy is sort of like college, but you also have to be nominated by either a Congressman or senator. During that process, I handed my application to a Congressional staff person, who told me, “We’ll take it from here” — and I naively believed that person.
It turned out they never sent my application. I didn’t find out until late in my senior year that I had only completed half the process. That’s the moment I realized that no one can ever care about your well being more than you. You have to take ownership and take action in order to complete your mission. I then drove from Maine to Washington, D.C., and explained my story to the admissions counselor. He was the stereotypical marine — perfect haircut, square jaw, shiny shoes, and not a wrinkle in his uniform. And I remember him just looking at me as if thinking to himself, “Is this kid worth the time?” He said he would call me next weekend.
As I’m driving back, I’m thinking, “I tried everything I could.” The next week he called me while I was at school. He told me he could get me into prep school — but I needed to make the decision at that very moment. I said yes. His name was U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Mike Melillo. I never crossed paths with that man again, but I will always remember him. He took a chance on me — and now I was on a path to the Naval Academy. He probably never knew that he essentially picked an astronaut at 18 years old. How crazy is that?
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NASA/GCTC/Andrey
Success Is Still a Team Effort
Everything I’ve been involved in has been a team sport, so to speak. In the SEALs, you’re surrounded by your platoon mates, and it’s also your teammates alongside you on a space mission. That’s the crew you’re with. You’re all trying to reach the same goal —so the team nature of it is, you don’t want to be the one who lets your team down. Like Bill Belichick always says, just do your job — block the guy you’re supposed to block. If everybody does that, every play has a chance for a touchdown. That’s the mentality that drives me: Whatever causes us to not get this mission done won’t be because I didn’t do my part. Be there for your teammates.
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NASA/GCTC/Andrey
Play Small Ball for Big Results
I’ll always refuse to fail because I didn’t try everything that was available to me. When I was driving home before being accepted into the Navy, I was content. I did everything I could and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll figure it another plan. But it did work out.
Then I went through SEAL training buds, and it’s hard. And you cannot get through it yourself. You support each other — your swim buddy, your teammates, classmates, and they support you.
Ultimately, not wanting to fail or quit is what got me through. But in order to succeed, you have to take the mission in bite-size chunks. In other words, the way you make it through SEAL training is to go meal by meal. If you go into anything thinking, “I’ve got six months to go till I graduate,” you’re screwed. You’ll never do it mentally. It’s just too big of a task.
Even if you’re just trying to get from Monday to Friday, you’re still screwed. You need to take it in tiny chunks. Make it to lunch – you have to eat — then grind your way to lunch. Then you grind your way to dinner. Break each step into bite sizes to help get you through that fear of failure.
Anything in life, whether it’s a tough workout, your next competition, whatever, break it down into the smallest possible chucks that’s manageable to you.
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Karen Nyberg/NASA
… But Still Know When It’s Time to Abort
In my careers with both the SEALs and NASA, we set out to do missions that have complex criteria. You need to accept different amounts of risk at different times in the mission SEAL teams — from weather to getting to your objective area, from your enemies to the terrain. Then it’s deciding when to push forward through more risk or when you have to let go and abort.
This is also true at NASA. Space walks are about seven hours long, with a very definite list of tasks that you’re, setting out to do that day. This was the case on a spacewalk that I had with Luca Parmitano. About 45 minutes in, a leak occurred in Luca’s helmet. We were already ahead of the pace, so when he said he was getting water in his helmet, I was at first like, aw shucks! Mission Control is gonna probably delay us for an hour. At the time it felt more of an inconvenience. But then another 10 minutes in I began realizing through Luca’s description of what was happening was a little more serious: Luca described it as the water feeling super cold, and for that to happen could only mean a mechanical failure of the suit.
I began going through this mental checklist — from being an inconvenience to this is not good. It was this foundation of risk versus mission success training that I learned through the SEALs that I now realized that we have to end this spacewalk and go in. At this time we still had 45 minutes to get back in — and it wasn’t a situation in which you can just go and close the door and take off the helmet and breathe safely. You can only remove the helmet once you get back inside with pressure around you.
I had to be able to make that decision — forget about the rest of the plan for today, it’s time to get our asses back inside and get this helmet off Luca.
By the time we got the door, the water was completely surrounding his face. But water behaves differently in space – it gets stuck on stuff. It surrounded his face like a layer of frosting on a cake all around his head. Luckily, Luca’s mustache was helping wick the water off his face. But another 20 minutes, and the water would’ve filled his entire helmet.
Just imagine being outside in the dark deep space. You can’t hear, you can’t see, and now you can’t breathe — it’s not a good spot to be in. Luca could’ve drowned in his own spacesuit if we had waited any longer.
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NASA
Enjoy The View
It all looks glorious from the outside when you’re reading articles about astronauts, and I’m assuming it is the same with pro athletes. But from our perspective, a lot of times we’re just grinding through each day. It’s just another training day, another exam, and so on.
What I eventually found that was healthy for me while in space was at least once a day just stopping what I was doing and looking out the window. I would look out and just go, “Wow, this is so damn cool. I’m watching the planet go by.” You have a million things to get done each day and it’s so easy to feel like you’re just crossing stuff off your to do list rather than appreciating where you are.
For an athlete, sometimes it takes an injury that may take them out for the season, which makes them appreciate each snap, each down, each thrill that much more.
During my first mission, I was just so focused on not screwing up and doing a good job and establishing a solid reputation. Our space shuttle missions were two weeks long, so it was about halfway through the mission before I realized that I should just stop and look at the earth. Whatever you do, capture each special moment in your brain. Even though my career may have been young at the time, there was no guarantee that I’d ever get back up there again.
