“In the Air Force Fighter Squadron culture, you quickly learn to have a thick skin because debriefs are ruthless, but not because they are personal attack… but because everyone wants their friends to come home alive in combat.
“We train really hard and expect to push people beyond their limits and then debrief to learn from those mistakes. It’s a really similar mindset to astronaut training. On the test side, it’s the mindset and culture of managing risk.
“People like to say, ‘safety first’ — but that’s not true. If safety was first, we wouldn’t be launching people into space. It’s like third or fourth. That being said, the test pilot world lives on weighing risk versus reward, trying to identify risks and mitigate them, and then account the best we can for unknown unknowns.”
— Raja Chari, Astronaut
Image Credit: NASA / Bill Ingalls
Interviewer: NASA / Thalia Patrinos