Marshburn, Davidson '82

Saturday morning’s planned launch of the space shuttle Endeavour will have more than the usual interest for our area and for anyone with a Davidson College connection: Among the crew will be Dr. Thomas Marshburn, a native of Statesville who graduated from Davidson College with a degree in physics in 1982.

Dr. Marshburn, 49, is an emergency room physician who joined NASA in 1994 as a fight surgeon.

Since then, he’s worked in a variety of roles, completed flight training and now finds himself on the verge of a trip into space – 40 years after the first men walked on the moon.

“I distinctly remember the night or the afternoon watching Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon, watching the first steps, listening to the first step on the moon,” Dr. Marshburn said in a pre-flight interview May 28. (Read the text on NASA.gov.)

He remembers the thrill, and an interest in space, but said he didn’t act on that interest until later in life. In fact, his earliest goal was to build spaceships, not fly them.

“I knew I needed to … go to math and science, engineering in particular. So I made the decision to go into physics regardless of the school I went to. (I) went to Davidson College, became a physics major, really strongly considered going on as an engineer as well but ended up going into engineering physics, little more theoretical,” he said in the pre-flight interview.

Ultimately, he discovered a love for medicine, and ended up a physician. (He got his M.D. at Wake Forest and a master’s of medical science at the University of Texas.)

“I never thought I could be an astronaut actually but I wanted to work for NASA. I wanted to in some way be involved with the space program and I knew excellence in some kind of technical field would be mandatory to be able to work for NASA.”

Now, he’s on shuttle mission STS-127 along with six other astronauts, whose task will be to deliver a section of a  Japanese laboratory complex to the International Space Station. Dr. Marshburn has an important role: He’ll be involved in three space walks.

As of 1:30 Friday, the countdown for Saturday’s 7:17 a.m. EDT launch was on schedule, NASA said in a mission update on its website.

NASA says flight officials will meet at 9:15 p.m. Friday to decide whether to give the go-ahead for loading the shuttle’s external fuel tank.

Davidson physics professor Larry Cain is in Florida for the launch at the invitation of Dr. Marshburn.

REMEMBER MARSHBURN?

Anybody in Davidson remember Tom Marshburn? Add your thoughts below.

LINKS

NASA’s launch blog will follow progress toward the liftoff beginning overnight, at 2 a.m. Saturday. CLICK HERE>

Read Dr. Tom Marshburn’s NASA biography.

June 7, 2009, Statesville Record & Landmark, “Iredell native headed for space.”