Has Space Lost Its Sparkle? Not for These Two Suburbanites

As a kid growing up in Schaumburg, Cathy Koerner liked her space. Outer space.

She played with the space control center activity set she got for Christmas when she was 4 years old. She joined in her father’s love of science fiction books and TV shows. In her senior year at Schaumburg High School, she even wrote a letter to her future self asking if she were working at NASA.

Now, Koerner is the lead shuttle flight director in Mission Control, overseeing today’s return to earth of the space shuttle Atlantis’ after a dangerous mission to the International Space Station.

"Everyone who works here is so dedicated to working in human space flight and preserving human space flight," Koerner says in her NASA biography. "I get to go to work and fly people into space; that’s pretty cool."

The daughter of Schaumburg Village President Al Larson, Koerner credits her childhood for launching her career.

"I was exposed to it early. It’s kind of neat to think, ‘Wow! This has sort of always been the path I’ve been on,’ " Koerner told the Daily Herald during a 2001 interview.

As a 41-year-old wife and mother, Koerner is instilling that passion in her two young children, according to her official NASA biography.

Most of today’s kids don’t get that exposure.

A generation ago, a photo of Apollo 11 moon mission astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins graced many bedroom walls of suburban kids. Youngsters knew the tragic story of Apollo 1 astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee, who died in a 1967 fire. Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper, Walter Schirra, Scott Carpenter, James Lovell and other astronauts of the 1960s weren’t the Beatles, but plenty of kids knew who they were.

So how many of the seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis can you name?

Shuttle pilot Lee Archambault grew up in Bellwood, hometown of Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. His parents, Lee and Mary Ann Archambault, live in Addison.

Do today’s kids (or adults) know any astronauts besides that diaper-wearing woman arrested in a bizarre love triangle?

"No, I don’t think they do," says Geza Gyuk, director of astronomy for the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago. "I think the space program is no longer the technical flagship it once was."

It’s not as if astronauts have changed that much.

"They are still heroes with a big H," Gyuk says.

A computer crash on this mission and safety concerns about today’s scheduled re-entry remind us that astronauts aren’t merely celestial commuters. Four years ago, seven astronauts were killed when the Columbia space shuttle broke up during re-entry. Another seven astronauts perished in the 1986 Challenger explosion.

"When [those accidents] occurred, it made me sit back and think astronauts weren’t just truck drivers, driving the shuttle back and forth," Gyuk notes. "But it made me sad that they didn’t have anyplace else to go."

In the 1960s, astronauts were in a thrilling race to the moon against the Russians.

"When you look up and see the moon, you can envision going there," says Gyuk, 37, who was born after man landed on the moon. "I don’t know if kids think ‘orbit’ is an interesting destination."

The applicants on "American Idol" may get more media coverage, but NASA rejects thousands of astronaut-wannabes.

"Competition is fierce, so I guess that shows there are plenty of people still interested in being an astronaut. It just doesn’t have quite the cultural cachet it used to," Gyuk says. Today’s kids don’t fully appreciate all the right stuff required "to boldly go where many people have gone before," he quips.

Part of the reason people are jaded may be because of all the virtual possibilities technology gives us.

"We always have this issue that we feel we are competing with Disneyland and Six Flags," Gyuk says of Adler (www.adlerplanetarium.org).

The museum’s "Shoot for the Moon" exhibit features artifacts from astronaut Jim Lovell and a restored Gemini 12 spacecraft, but it also boasts a new display of The Zula Patrol computer-animated aliens from a popular PBS children’s show.

Maybe Koerner’s journey from a children’s space control center activity set to a lead flight director’s chair in Mission Control will ignite a spark in a kid. Maybe pilot Archambault will blaze a path. A child who sticks a photo of Koerner or Archambault on a bedroom wall might grow up to be an astronaut or rocket scientist.

Hoping to fuel that spirit, Adler is developing a CubeSat program, where young people actually will launch a tiny satellite into space.

"It’s not just ‘I’m hearing about space exploration. I’m doing it,’ " Gyuk says in explaining kids’ attitude toward the CubeSat program.

"When you really get through to kids, the majesty of outer space, that [thrill of space exploration] is still there," Gyuk says. "It keeps me hopeful."

Did you know they now eat real food?

Early astronauts, including John Glenn, had to eat freeze-dried powders, little cubes of food and semi-liquids squeezed out of toothpaste-like tubes.

Advances in technology have expanded the menu choices for today’s shuttle missions. Astronauts can eat from a standard menu or pick items to suit their own taste – as long as they meet dietary requirements and don’t add up to more than 3.8 pounds of food a day.

What pilot Lee Archambault ordered for his menu in space:

Eggs, dried peas, grits, juice, tuna salad spread, vegetable risotto, lasagna, asparagus, mac & cheese, creamed spinach, beef tips with mushrooms, shrimp cocktail and coffee with cream.

See more on the crew and mission menus, see nasa.gov.

When shuttle lands

- The shuttle’s first landing opportunity today is at 12:55 p.m. Central time, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA says.