School Leader Excited About Adventure
By KELLY HOLLERAN
It was 22 years ago when Melanie Vickers learned she had been chosen as one of 114 finalists to become the first citizen passenger and teacher to ride a space shuttle.
She was not picked for the ride that ended in the tragic explosion of The Challenger and deaths of teacher Christa McAuliffe and the other six astronauts aboard.
Vickers is back in Cocoa Beach, Fla., this week with 61 fellow teachers. They saw Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe’s backup, become the first teacher since McAuliffe to fly into space.
And during this week’s trip, Vickers will be closer to space than she has ever been before. Vickers, who is Kanawha County’s assistant superintendent of middle schools, will be riding in a microgravity training plane.
Vickers, 56, won a drawing valued at $3,800 and will get to ride on G-Force One, a specially modified Boeing 727-200 aircraft.
During the ride, she will experience weightlessness in a 90-foot- long padded zone as the plane performs 15 parabolas over the Atlantic Ocean.
During the four-hour experience, Vickers will perform three experiments on video to demonstrate Newton’s physics. She will bring the video back to show her students.
Although she has ideas, Vickers is not sure which experiments she will perform.
She may bring along a Transformer, a toy popular with children and the subject of a recent movie, and attempt to alter the gadget from a car into a robot.
That would demonstrate the challenges astronauts face when they are dealing with technology that is compact and serves a double duty.
Vickers also is considering bringing a lock into the aircraft with her because it’s something she sees students struggling with every day.
As a quilter, Vickers’ final idea is to pack a needle and thread along for the ride and try to sew while experiencing zero gravity. She wants to see for herself just how difficult it is for astronauts to sew together parts of a space shuttle, as one had to do three missions ago.
Vickers will be taking off from the same runway as Morgan did in the Endeavor on Wednesday. She says she can hardly wait for her adventure.
“It’s going to be the best thing that has happened to me educationally and professionally,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s the dream of a lifetime.”
When her name was announced as the drawing winner, Vickers could hardly contain her excitement.
“I jumped up and ran up there,” she said. “I said, ‘Is it tonight I get to go?’ “
Saturday cannot come fast enough for Vickers.
Before she can ride, though, Vickers must go through a brief training session, which also will take place Saturday.
While she is waiting, Vickers will attend sessions at a space conference being held in Florida with about half of the other teachers who were also finalists for the 1985 teacher-in-space competition.
A lot of reminiscing has been happening at the conference, although the teachers have occasionally met at other conferences held throughout the past 22 years.
“We have kept in contact over the years,” Vickers said.
One of the closest encounters to weightlessness Vickers has experienced was at a conference in February in Houston.
There she was able to enter a large pool, similar to that which astronauts use to train for space. In the pool, she and others put together a space station.
Vickers is fascinated with space exploration because of the tremendous benefits she sees it bringing to humans.
“There are so many things that wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for space,” she said. “Not only do we go to space because human beings want to explore. The reason we are going there is to improve our life on earth. That’s what the space program is all about.”
Contact writer Kelly Holleran at kellyh@dailymail.com or 348- 4850.
(c) 2007 Charleston Daily Mail. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.