Professor Clayton Anderson has casually walked in space
He’s even played ‘outer space sports’
Clayton “Glue” Anderson (“kley” means glue in Russian!) is presently a distinguished faculty in the Department of Aerospace Engineering. But his past is even cooler than you might guess at first glance.
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Clayton Anderson in his office at Iowa State University
“I wanted to play pro-football, pro-baseball, pro-basketball, be a singer and all the things that a lot of kids want to be, but I really wanted to be an astronaut,” Anderson said. This dream seemed achievable once he got a summer internship at NASA during his college.
Becoming an astronaut is a tedious process that he knows all too well, having applied 15 separate times to become one.
”It’s easy to apply, it’s hard to get picked,” he said. “My first application was all the work, where I had to gather all the information and type it all up with a typewriter.”
“The 13th time I got the interview, but I knew I didn’t get picked because the other candidates had background checks subsequently,” he said.
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Anderson flies the Iowa State colors aboard the International Space Station. Photo courtesy of NASA
Eventually, though, he was picked. And off to outer space he went, but his time floating above the Earth’s surface were far from challenge-free.
“Personal hygiene is a challenge in micro-gravity,” he said.
- As for what he did for fun up in space? “There were only two days that I was actually free. I usually went and took pictures or played outer space sports.”
Anderson watches as a water bubble floats in front of him on the shuttle Discovery during the STS-131 mission
- “Spacewalking is the coolest,” he said. “Looking out the window was a very reverend experience for me. When you look at the Earth, it’s so beautiful. You can imagine the mountains, the trees, the animals, humans and all of it working together, it’s amazing! Look at the the stars, there are ‘bazillions!’ of them.”
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Clay Anderson’s shadow during a spacewalk he took in July 2007, while he was part of Expedition 15. Photo courtesy of NASA.
- “The International Space Station is a great place to stay,” he said.
Refusing to comment on the “prohibition era” of the ISS, he added: “Surprisingly I didn’t feel claustrophobic. The size of the living space is about a 3-bedroom house and the volume close to a Boeing 747 because you can use all the space. I enjoyed writing as a hobby and wrote short stories about my experiences in space. That’s how my book came to be.”
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Does it count as a selfie?
As an ISU alumnus, he has fond memories of the university.
“VEISHEA was cool, but it was different in my time,” he said with a smirk, knowing the controversy behind it at ISU.
He’s also an active blogger, but doesn’t take kindly to trolls. “I like social media, but when people question my integrity it is on,” he said. Contrary to the advice from his better half, he sometimes gets into arguments with these Internet trolls — and usually wins the argument by saying “I’ve been to space.”
From growing up in the humble town of Ashland, Nebraska to achieving his childhood dreams of walking in space, Clayton “Glue” Anderson truly lives up to the title of his book, “The Ordinary Spaceman: From Boyhood Dreams to Astronaut”.