LOCAL Houston | The City Guide FEBRUARY 2016 | Page 44

CHRISTIN

MASTRACCHIO
Christin Hart Mastracchio was just 13 years old when she realized she
wanted to be an astronaut. The “a-ha” moment came when her father
asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. Whatever it was, he
said, she had to be passionate about it. “He asked me what job I would
pay to do instead of being paid to do it, and the only thing I could think
of was fly in space,” Mastracchio recalls. “So that was it.”

T H E

R I G H T

S T U F F

Casting aside the possibility of pink tutus, the Clear Lake teen worked
her way through high school, excelling both academically and athletically. An accomplished gymnast who trained at Bela Karolyi’s gymnastics
school as a youngster, Mastracchio was relentless in her drive and ambition. But when the time came to start high school, she shifted her focus
and efforts away from gymnastics to competitive cheerleading and college. Gymnastics and tumbling had prepared her for the former; tenacity
would guide her through the latter. She had, in fact, already set her sights
on the U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY (USAFA), as it offered her the opportunity to
study astronautical engineering.
“One way you get to be an astronaut is to go to one of the service
academies,” says Mastracchio, who was also a cheerleader for the
Academy’s football team. “You study something like aerospace engineering and then you apply to be a test pilot. From there, you apply to be a
candidate for astronaut school at NASA.” After graduating from the
USAFA, the five-foot, four-inch blonde, who goes by the call sign “Sparta”
and is “just exactly tall enough” to be a pilot, went directly to graduate
school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, she studied
advanced aeronautical engineering. On completing a master’s degree,
Mastracchio, by then an officer, was assigned to the NATO joint jet pilot
training program at Sheppard AFB. From there, she went to Barksdale
AFB, where she learned to fly B-52 aircraft, a “450,000-pound monstrosity of metal, fuel and bombs that’s older than my parents.”
At some point between college graduation and flight school, she married fellow Houstonian DAVID MASTRACCHIO, whose own father is astronaut

RICK MASTRACCHIO. Four years ago, they relocated to Minot AFB, where
she is now a Captain and B-52 commander, only one of three female B52 pilots on the base. From there, she often flies 19 hours to undertake
missions and training in and around Guam. Most recently, Mastracchio
garnered a coveted spot at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards
AFB in California. One of three women who made it into the program,
she will spend a year there studying for another master’s degree while
undergoing flight training with nearly 30 Y