The grit of a Navy SEAL is unmatched. Candidates will go through hell and back throughout fourteen months of initial training, followed by eighteen months of pre-deployment and specialized training. Lone Survivor of SEAL Team 10 Marcus Luttrell accounts for the start of his first hell week, “I can’t remember the precise time, but it was after 2030 and before 2100. Suddenly there was a loud shout, and someone literally kicked open the side door. Bam! And a guy carrying a machine gun, followed by two others, came charging in, firing from the hip. The lights went off, and then all three gunmen opened fire, spraying the room with bullets (blanks, I hoped)” (Luttrell 2017). A man of few words Marcus Luttrell went onto graduate from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Class 228 and fight in Operation Redwing. One year later, Navy SEAL Jonny Kim was assigned to SEAL Team 3, going on to completing over a hundred classified combat missions. Currently, Kim is an active duty commissioned officer under the rank of lieutenant. According to Brittany Shammas with the Washington Post, it wasn’t until Jonny Kim deployed to Iraq when he decided that he would like to pursue a career in medicine, “It was one of the worst feelings of helplessness,” Kim said, according to the paper. “There wasn’t much I could do, just make sure his bleeding wasn’t obstructing his airway, making sure he was positioned well. He needed a surgeon. He needed a physician and I did eventually get him to one, but … that feeling of helplessness was very profound for me” (Shammas 2020). Kim wanted to protect, then save, and finally, at Harvard Medical School, he became obsessed with exploration and applied to the NASA Astronaut Corps. In June of 2017, emotions scattered as he was accepted into NASA Astronaut Group 22 amongst the eighteen thousand applicants that applied. Later after two years of training, Jonny Kim graduated with ten other Mission ready astronauts in January of 2020. These astronauts include Kayla Barron, Zena Cardman, Raja Chari, Mathew Dominick, Bob Hines, Warren Hoburg, Jasmin Moghbeli, Loral O’Hara, Dr. Francisco Rubio, and Jessica Watkins. NASA went onto release this statement, “The new graduates may be assigned to missions destined for the International Space Station, the Moon, and ultimately, Mars. With a goal of sustainable lunar exploration later this decade, NASA will send the first woman and next man to the surface on the Moon by 2024. Additional lunar missions are planned once a year thereafter and human exploration of Mars is targeted for the mid-2030s” (NASA 2020).

Sources:

https://www.navy.com/seals

https://www.thedailybeast.com/navy-seal-training-the-start-of-hell-week-by-marcus-luttrell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonny_Kim

https://www.businessinsider.com/jonny-kim-korean-american-nasa-navy-seal-los-angeles-2020-1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/01/14/nasaastronautjonnykim/

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/07/med-school-grad-to-trade-scrubs-for-space-suit/

https://pattillmanfoundation.org/meet-our-scholars/jonathan-kim/

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-newest-astronauts-ready-for-space-station-moon-and-mars-missions