Doug Hurley had a few spare minutes, so he did what any NASCAR fan might do. He popped a DVD into a nearby computer and watched a snippet of Dale Earnhardt steering his way to victory in the 1998 Daytona 500

It was the most ordinary of rituals, played out in the most extraordinary circumstances. Thing is, Hurley wasn't sitting in his living room kicked back in his favorite recliner. He was docked with the International Space Station (ISS), about 250 miles above the Earth, traveling at a little more than 17,000 mph. Consider it just another first for America's space program:

• First American in space: Alan Shepherd.
• First mission to orbit the moon: Apollo 8.
• First person to walk on the moon: Neil Armstrong.
• First astronaut to watch NASCAR footage in space: Doug Hurley.

The pilot of the STS-127 mission on board Space Shuttle Endeavour, Hurley and six crewmates launched on July 15 and landed 16 days later. Hurley had waited nine years for his first spaceflight, after being named to the astronaut corps in July 2000. In that, he could identify with Earnhardt's struggle to win NASCAR's biggest event.

"I'd waited a long time to fly in space, and so that just seemed to be the appropriate one to watch," said Hurley, who also carried along a DVD of the infamous 1979 Daytona 500. "With Dale, it just was one thing after another. He never gave up. He finally won it. It's cool to see.

"That picture of him driving down pit lane after he won, and everybody's out there giving him a high five or waving to him or slapping the car, it's a whole different deal, but I can definitely understand how he was feeling that day. It was kinda how I felt when the Solid Rocket Boosters finally lit [during the launch of STS-127]."

“

I'm thinking, 'I'm going 17,500 mph ... I'm doing a lap around the space station.' I think that's pretty cool ... a little faster than any qualifying lap.

”

-- DOUG HURLEY

A TRUE FAN

Hurley came by his love of the sport honestly. One of his cousins, Nan Hurley, is married to Greg Zipadelli, crew chief for Joe Gibbs Racing rookie Joey Logano. Hurley attended his first race in 2000 at Watkins Glen, which is about from his hometown of Apalachin, N.Y.

Since then, Hurley has been hooked, so much so that his official NASA biography lists one of his interests as "attending as many NASCAR races as possible." His favorite drivers are those who've driven for Zipadelli -- Tony Stewart and Logano. Make no mistake about it: Hurley isn't some D-list celebrity who shows up at the track for a photo op, never to think of the sport again. He's the real deal.

During the flight of STS-127, Hurley was sure to keep up with what was taking place in and around the world of NASCAR.

"I think people by this time know that if there's something going on with NASCAR, they'd better let me know about it," Hurley said with a laugh. "The folks on the ground were great. ... I think I heard from Zippy, too, just to see how they did at the Brickyard.

"I got to see [the Chicago] race in quarantine, because we'd scrubbed that day. The next weekend was an off weekend, and the weekend after that was the Brickyard. So I only missed one race. They send you updates [during the flight], like 'news from home' things. They uplink that every day. That had auto racing in there, so I could kinda keep track of stuff, but not like I normally like to do."

One of the highlights of the flight for Hurley was taking over Endeavour's controls from commander Mark Polansky after undocking from the ISS on July 28. While circling the station, as his crewmates photographed it from virtually every conceivable angle, Hurley flew the most complicated machine ever built. Even then, he puts the experience in terms any NASCAR fan could understand.

"I'm thinking, 'I'm going 17,500 mph ... I'm doing a lap around the space station.' I think that's pretty cool ... a little faster than any qualifying lap," Hurley quipped.

Eat your heart out, Bill Elliott.

Elliott turned in the fastest qualifying lap in NASCAR history at Talladega in 1987, with a speed of nearly 213 mph. In comparison, while doing the ISS fly-around, Hurley was covering Talladega's 2.66-mile length in a little more than half a second.

The next few months will be incredibly busy for Hurley, who'll make trips to Washington, D.C., Canada and Japan. He tried to make the Watkins Glen race but there was no way to cram it into his schedule. Charlotte is a possibility, but for sure, Hurley plans to be at the Texas race in November.

"If I get to one before that, it's going to kinda be one of those things where we fit it in our schedule [at the last minute]," Hurley said. "We're pretty busy with debriefs for the next couple of weeks, and then after that, we start into our post-flight PR events."

A LONG TIME COMING

Hurley traveled a long road before making his first trip into space. He led the "Cape Crusader" crew for STS-107, the last flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia, which broke up during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003. He'd been responsible for communications tests between the orbiter and mission control, helping set switches in Columbia's cockpit, as well as strapping the crew into their seats. It's a tradition for astronauts about to launch to take the name tags of their close-out crew with them into space, and sure enough, STS-107 commander Rick Husband grabbed Hurley's and placed it right above his window.

Hurley was the last person to leave Columbia before it launched on Jan. 16, 2003. Later, he served as NASA's director of operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. On top of all that, there were the five scrubs that delayed the launch of STS-127 more than a month.

To finally fly after all that time and after all that had happened meant the world to Hurley.

"You just have to stick to your goals and keep working," he said. "There were a lot of different events over the last nine years that were tough to deal with, and one of them, obviously, was the Columbia accident. It makes you think about why you're here and what you're doing.

"The [STS-127] flight itself was great. The crew, you develop such a close relationship, it's almost like you're a family. The mission was one of the busiest, most complex missions they've ever thrown together for the Space Shuttle program. I'm sure I'll get in trouble for this, but it was probably one of the most complex space missions we've put together, period.

"We had our curveballs, but we made it work. It's a real, real, real tremendous sense of satisfaction. To do it with six or seven of your favorite folks to spend time with, plus the ISS crew as well, it was worth it, for sure."