My name is mark muller. I am the assistant manager of children and Teens Department at politics and prose. Welcome to our event. The official website for our guest says it all. Leland is the only person drafted into the National Football league to have flown in space. It is a statement that speaks to a career and vast body of experiences that have taken him to the halls of nasa and an engineer and administrator and beyond. I mean 250 miles above the earth beyond. He attended Heritage High School before going to the university of virginia on a football scholarship. He earned a degree in chemistry. He was drafted by the lions in 1986 but he had a hamstring injury that forced him into his next career. During this time he worked at nasa Research Center in the area of nondestructive testing, creating optical fiber centers. He had publications in numerous journals as well as a job leading Vehicle Health Monitoring Team for the nasa launch vehicle program. He was selected to be an astronaut i