CAL POLY - As Cal Poly graduate Rick Sturckow prepares for his third space flight next year, he speaks very matter-of-factly of the dangers astronauts face in orbit.

It's a subject he knows intimately. Three of the seven astronauts who died aboard space shuttle Columbia a year ago were personal friends.

"This is not something new for someone who has been involved in military aviation for almost 20 years," he said during a phone interview from Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"These things happen and it's just part of the deal. I feel very well prepared to do this mission."

Sturckow, a 1984 Poly mechanical engineering alumnus, will command the fifth mission to come after the Feb. 1, 2003, Columbia explosion. His upcoming mission, dubbed STS-117, will likely launch around summer 2005, he said.

The crew will spend the 12-day mission continuing construction on the International Space Station -- a place Sturckow traveled to on his two previous missions in 1998 and 2001.

But this time will be a little different, because Sturckow will be in charge of the crew. As the STS-117 commander, if something goes wrong in space, he's the one making decisions along with staffers at Johnson Space Center.

Sturckow said the Columbia disaster does not make him nervous.

"For every phase of flight we have procedures in place to deal with problems," he said. "We've been in simulators to deal with things such as cabin decompression and electrical failures."

During the interview, Sturckow also reflected on his Cal Poly days, when he was more interested in being a diesel truck mechanic than an astronaut. He was a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and raced stock cars at Santa Maria Speedway.

In 1990, he graduated from the Naval Fighter Weapons School -- popularized by the movie "Top Gun" -- and flew 41 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. He joined NASA in 1995.

Now a veteran of space exploration, he's excited about President Bush's announcement last month that by 2020 the United States will send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

Sturckow, 42, would like to be a part of those missions.

"It's real exciting -- I'd love to be there," he said. "That's exactly where we need to be going. It's our destiny to continue to explore."