Para-astronaut John McFall won a medal at the 2008 Paralympics, and the lessons he learned from that experience help him today as a human who may one day fly to the International Space Station.
“I was the annoying kid who was on every sports team, but I didn’t necessarily have ambitions to be an Olympic athlete. After I lost my leg, I started running again, and sports were a big part of my life,” McFall told Space.com in an exclusive interview on August 18. (The 2024 Paralympics begin today, August 28).
McFall, a reserve astronaut with the European Space Agency (ESA), was selected in 2022. He is part of a group of individuals who have completed astronaut familiarization training with ESA but have not yet been assigned to a mission (or completed all training for space); this will not happen until ESA has an identified need.
In the meantime, McFall is working on completing the “Fly!” study, the goal of which is to send an astronaut with a lower leg prosthesis like the one he uses to the International Space Station (ISS).
Related: Para-astronaut John McFall hopes to see a disabled astronaut fly on the ISS by 2030 (exclusive, video)
The study found no major problems with the lower leg prosthesis itself or with performing tasks with such a disability. While the results are not necessarily enough to clear the aircraft to fly, they do show that most questions have been answered and that McFall may be able to carry out an ISS mission in the future.
When McFall was invited to compete in the 2008 Paralympics, he said the honour of the opportunity was immeasurable, but that by nature he was “not a great competitor” unless he was trying to set the standard with his own performance.
“I suffer from incredible stage fright,” he said.
McFall’s 100-meter race was over in just 12.5 seconds, despite training hard for about eight years beforehand. He recalled the stress of preparing for “this upcoming event that millions of people around the world would be watching, and that I would be put on this stage and do this one thing.”
McFall won a bronze medal. However, given the stress of preparing and performing, his thoughts as he crossed the finish line were very different: “My very first thought, my first feeling as I crossed the finish line was relief.”
Preparing for the race was one of the factors that eventually brought McFall into the space world. He used the effort he had put into his athletic career to apply to medical school and then specialize in traumatology and orthopedics. McFall’s life experience as a prosthetic user was also very helpful in formulating the “Fly!” study, as he combined his medical knowledge and orthopedic expertise to work with other study authors to make the case for why an astronaut should fly to the ISS with a prosthetic.
“What you put in – the effort you put in – will be rewarded,” McFall said. “That was a real life lesson for me.”
