Cassie’s background is military - she entered the space program through her experience as a pilot in the US air-force. But she does not fit the stereotype of military personnel. She is non-competitive. She has no particular interest in, or attraction to, machismo. She doesn’t have an automatic deferential response to rank or duty.
Cassie has a personal interest in the arts. She was the only crew member who packed books in her kit-bag as personal possessions.
Both instinctively and academically, Cassie is a humanist. She likes people, she cares about people. Her sense of mankind is non-cynical and forgiving: she would believe that, in general and as a default position, people are good.
Cassie is an atheist. She doesn’t believe in God because she sees no reason for God to exist. She is confident in herself. She is comfortable within her own skin.
On the psychological profiles about who would cope best with the long-term deep-space mission, Cassie’s score was the highest. There were pilots in the space program who matched and exceeded her skill, but none that were seen as more suitable for the stresses and pressures of the mission.
She has no primary partner, and, as with all the crew, she has no children. However, four months before the mission left Earth Orbit, Cassie became pregnant. The identity of the father was known only to her: he was never aware that Cassie was briefly carrying his child.
She terminated the pregnancy after six weeks. The only member of the crew who knows this is Searle, who assisted her in hiding her blood test results from the other doctors in the space program. The termination of her pregnancy had a subtle effect on her outlook - a discreet emotional accent in her perception of life, and death. This nuance might have skewed her psychological profiling, had the most crucial psych-tests not already been carried out.
She dreams continuously about the surface of the sun.
