I've got stories from recent travels that I will post soon.
It is no secret that since Star Lab first arrived at McAuliffe when I was eight, I have wanted to be an astronaut. Even when I left for middle school, I came back to McAuliffe to share the stories of the constellations with first graders. I sat on the roof of a friends house to look at Hale Bop as it passed by in 1996-97 and drove out to the farm fields with my parents to watch a meteor shower. The one summer I wasn't playing sports, I went to Space Camp in Alabama and was the co-pilot on our mission at the end of the week. I took at stab at that path for the first three semesters of college when I declared my major as Aeronautics Engineering with an emphasis in Astronautics. On February 1, 2003 I received phone calls from my brother and my parents early in the morning (well, early college time) telling me to turn on the television, the shuttle Columbia had exploded. Most recently, I was going through shelves in my old bedroom and discovered four different folders full of information on space and colleges to get degrees for engineering. To say the least, I have been obsessed with space for quite some time.
While I ended up with a degree in communication, I still stare at the stars whenever possible and I am in awe of the unknown. I imagine paddling down the river of stars in the Milky Way or floating between galaxies. I SCUBA dive to get the sense of weightlessness, but I can only stay under water for so long. Living in zero gravity for days on end would be a whole other amazing adventure. I still think about what it would be like to be an astronaut. With the shuttles retired however, it seems my best option to get into space is to strike it rich and fly as a paying customer on SpaceX or Virgin Galactic.
I was prompted to write this post because of the recent deaths of two influential astronauts - Neil Armstrong (died August 25, 2012) and Sally Ride (died July 23, 2012).
Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon surface. He is in a small, elite group of astronauts, only twelve men have walked on the moon. He was a pioneer for the astronaut corps, first as a test pilot and flying in both the Gemini and Apollo programs. Read more about his life and career here.
Of course I went to Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, so I knew about her, but Sally Ride was even more of a role model being the first American woman in space. She paved the way for many Christa McAuliffe and other women to become pilots, payload specialists and live on space stations. According to wikipedia, there have been 523 astronauts from 38 countries, 56 of them being women from eight countries.1 She flew on two different missions and continued to promote science and space exploration for all kids, especially girls. Read more about her life and career here.
As new shuttles and rockets are built, there will be more pioneers. But there is something special about the firsts that Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride achieved.
It is no secret that since Star Lab first arrived at McAuliffe when I was eight, I have wanted to be an astronaut. Even when I left for middle school, I came back to McAuliffe to share the stories of the constellations with first graders. I sat on the roof of a friends house to look at Hale Bop as it passed by in 1996-97 and drove out to the farm fields with my parents to watch a meteor shower. The one summer I wasn't playing sports, I went to Space Camp in Alabama and was the co-pilot on our mission at the end of the week. I took at stab at that path for the first three semesters of college when I declared my major as Aeronautics Engineering with an emphasis in Astronautics. On February 1, 2003 I received phone calls from my brother and my parents early in the morning (well, early college time) telling me to turn on the television, the shuttle Columbia had exploded. Most recently, I was going through shelves in my old bedroom and discovered four different folders full of information on space and colleges to get degrees for engineering. To say the least, I have been obsessed with space for quite some time.
While I ended up with a degree in communication, I still stare at the stars whenever possible and I am in awe of the unknown. I imagine paddling down the river of stars in the Milky Way or floating between galaxies. I SCUBA dive to get the sense of weightlessness, but I can only stay under water for so long. Living in zero gravity for days on end would be a whole other amazing adventure. I still think about what it would be like to be an astronaut. With the shuttles retired however, it seems my best option to get into space is to strike it rich and fly as a paying customer on SpaceX or Virgin Galactic.
I was prompted to write this post because of the recent deaths of two influential astronauts - Neil Armstrong (died August 25, 2012) and Sally Ride (died July 23, 2012).
Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon surface. He is in a small, elite group of astronauts, only twelve men have walked on the moon. He was a pioneer for the astronaut corps, first as a test pilot and flying in both the Gemini and Apollo programs. Read more about his life and career here.
Of course I went to Christa McAuliffe Elementary School, so I knew about her, but Sally Ride was even more of a role model being the first American woman in space. She paved the way for many Christa McAuliffe and other women to become pilots, payload specialists and live on space stations. According to wikipedia, there have been 523 astronauts from 38 countries, 56 of them being women from eight countries.1 She flew on two different missions and continued to promote science and space exploration for all kids, especially girls. Read more about her life and career here.
As new shuttles and rockets are built, there will be more pioneers. But there is something special about the firsts that Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride achieved.
