Col. Randy Bresnik, USMC, Iraq, NASA

Randy Bresnik was born into a family that already had an aviation legacy. His father was a U.S. Army Air Cavalry helicopter pilot in Vietnam and his grandfather spent five years as the official photographer for Amelia Earhart. But Bresnik would chart his own path, attending The Citadel as a Navy ROTC student and ultimately choosing the U.S. Marine Corps. He has flown 86 different types of planes but his favorite is the F/A-18.In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Bresnik takes us through his journey as a pilot, his early deployments, his memories of 9/11, and he goes into great detail about his close air support missions in the opening weeks of the Iraq War. He also details his pursuit of becoming a NASA astronaut, training for missions, and the family drama that played out on earth while he performed his first mission. Finally, Bresnik explains what a spacewalk is like and why he is excited about what lies ahead for the U.S. space program