Marine veteran Norman Thagard, M.D., shares a journey of adventures that have taken him from war zones to the cosmos. In 1968, the UT Southwestern alumnus (Medicine ’77) joined the Marines as a naval aviator during the Vietnam War. Over the course of 166 combat missions, he narrowly escaped death twice. Once discharged, Dr. Thagard was accepted to medical school at UT Southwestern. He discovered parallels between military aviation and medicine. “The consequences of inattention or dereliction of duty are measured in lives in both professions,” he said. Dr. Thagard left UT Southwestern to become an astronaut in 1978, joining NASA for five space missions and logging more than 140 days in space.

Read: Starship Trooper