Episode 60: Damon Feltman

[gentle music] I grew up in a, in a town, uh, called Southaven, Mississippi.

It is just south of Memphis, so far northwest Mississippi is, is my, my home area.

My, my parents, like a lot of, like a lot of kids' parents, obviously they are super, uh, influential in your life.

My family situation, uh, both parents grew up what I would say is, uh, probably poor by current standards.

Dad was a factory worker.

Firestone used to have a tire plant in Memphis, and so he worked there for a long time.

And, and then the, the factory closed, uh, and he ended up being a car salesman pretty much for the rest of his life.

Mom was a, uh, was a nurse pretty much for her entire professional life.

Now she didn't, she didn't go to nursing until after my sister and I got started in school.

Mm-hmm.

So that's their background.

They were super supportive of kind of this ambition that I had, uh, about doing some space stuff.

I went to Mississippi State University, which is about three hours from, from the Space Center.

I, I started out in aerospace engineering.

Uh, charm and good looks will get you through high school, but it will not-

[laughs]

... get you through engineering school, so I finished with a degree in quantitative analysis from the business school.

Okay.

So a little peculiar that, um, at that moment in time, I was a business grad, got, uh, selected to go into the space program for the Air Force.

Was there a catalyst that sort of, that you went, "Oh, wow, space is cool"?

Yes.

I, I would say I don't really remember a time where I wasn't, like, fascinated with space.

Yeah.

Part of that is, you know, so I was born in 196- 1969, uh, in March.

Quite literally some of my earliest memories are of, you know, seeing astronauts on television and stuff like that.