The way NASA's astronaut office picks a crew from its esteemed corps is something of a mystery.
But the space agency's 2018 selection of Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to fly SpaceX's Crew Dragon spaceship seems almost obvious.
And both shared the aspiration of every test pilot turned astronaut: the freak opportunity to fly a brand-new bird.
"If you gave us one thing that we could have put on our list of dream jobs that we would have gotten to have someday, it would have been to be aboard a new spacecraft and conduct a test mission," Behnken told reporters on May 20, before SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched him and Hurley into orbit.
After that launch, Behnken and Hurley docked to the International Space Station (ISS), where they spent 63 days living and working.
NASA, meanwhile, flew its last space shuttle in July 2011.
Since then, the agency had been forced to rely on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to get its astronauts into space — a monopolistic arrangement that cost NASA and put its access to the ISS at risk. .
NASA awarded SpaceX about $2.7 billion of that sum to develop, build, and test Crew Dragon, as well as fly it on seven missions.
By joining the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps, he eventually would up as a test pilot in the Marine Corps with the call sign "Chunky" — then later became a member of NASA's year 2000 astronaut class.
Amid that academic work, he joined the US Air Force's ROTC program, which led him to become a test pilot and also a member of the same class of NASA astronaut candidates.
Hurley's last mission, aboard space shuttle Atlantis in July 2011, was the final flight of that program.
Reisman shared a story about being in a SpaceX meeting with Behnken in which some employees began to talk to him "like a dumb pilot" about vehicle-control theory — which the astronaut studied for his Ph.D.
In 2015, NASA picked Behnken and Hurley, along with two other astronauts, as part of a "Commercial Crew Cadre" to work with SpaceX and Boeing on new commercial spaceships.
When each astronaut was later asked what makes the other a badass, Behnken said Hurley "is ready for anything all the time" and "always prepared.".
"When you're going to fly into space on a test mission, you couldn't ask for a better person or a better type of individual to be there with you," Behnken said.
Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut who flew to space four times, said the reputations of Behnken and Hurley precede them.
Last month, NASA selected McArthur to pilot Crew Dragon's second official mission to the ISS — the most recent mission was considered a demo — called Crew-2, next spring
She previously flew in the space shuttle Atlantis
Behnken said delays in the Commercial Crew Program — the first launch was slated for 2017 — worked to their advantage in the parenting department
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