NASA trip provides infinite amount of possibilities

Compass

HOW WE DID IT

NASA trip provides infinite amount of possibilities

By TINA HEINECKE-KURTZ AND MINDY CHARLES as told to Elaine Schmidt

Sunday, March 21, 2004

We are serious space geeks.

Our experience at the Marshall Space Flight Workshop in February was the second time we visited a NASA space center.

The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is the NASA site responsible for manned-mission launches. When you listen to the audio feed during shuttle launches, you hear the words, “clear tower,” after the rocket is safely in the air. Everything up to that is controlled by the Huntsville center.

In fact, the control room was still set up as it was for the Columbia flight, which was kind of eerie.

As we were standing in the gallery at the center, they were just sending up the day’s plan to the space station. They were preparing for the first time they were going to leave the station with no one left inside so they could do some repairs. There were lots of jokes about hoping no one forgot the keys.

Fifteen teachers were selected from Wisconsin and Iowa to participate in this workshop. In the application process you had to demonstrate that you were willing to participate and carry out activities in the classroom.

Right now NASA is working on some fast-growing wheat and soy. These will be essential for traveling to Mars or in setting up a station on the moon, since there is no way to take along enough food for those long missions.

Both of us teach eighth-grade science and have made a science project of growing those same plants in different growing mediums in our classrooms. The kids are doing exactly the same experiments that NASA is doing.

One of the best things about the experience was going through the section of the center where kids do summer space camp. There they have exact models of the shuttle and the international space station. It was amazing to actually sit in those seats and see how tiny and compact everything is.

We also got behind-the-scenes tours of the Marshall Center and met with scientists. We got to go up to the top of the launch tower where they have tested shuttle engines and Soyuz engines. We had to act like we weren’t scared out of our socks.

But really the best thing is what happened when we got back. Our students are really excited and full of questions.

Now when one of our students says they might want to be a mechanical engineer someday, we can give them the e-mail address of a mechanical engineer at NASA. The folks will answer those e-mails and help the kids figure out what classes they should be taking.

We came back with an excellent video clip of one of the NASA engineers saying, “I need to talk to teachers because I need people in my lab who are great in math and science. If they are great in math and science they can pick their job at NASA.”

This makes us sit back and think we had better have a good day at school every day. Who knows — one of the next generation of NASA rocket scientists could come from our school.