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Subject: Barbara Morgan preparing to fly... finally...
Time: 9:31:00 AM EDT
Author: stuartatk
"Barbara who?" I'm sure many of you just asked. Well, let me tell you who she is. Barbara Morgan is a teacher, a teacher who trained with "Teacher In Space" Christa McAuliffe for the 1986 flight of shuttle Challenger, the mission that ended in such tragedy when the shuttle, and all its brave crew, was lost 73 seconds after launch on January 28th 1986.
Barbara was Christa's back-up on the mission, and after the loss of Challenger, which took so many good friends away from her, I'm sure part of Barbara just wanted to turn her back on the whole space program and walk away from her dream of flying and working and teaching in space. But Barbara didn't turn her back, she didn't walk away, and finally, on August 7th, around midnight UK time, she will go into space as part of a seven man crew onboard shuttle Endeavour for mission STS-118.
STS118's main objective is to deliver another part of the space station and continue its orbital construction, and Barbara will play a very important role in that, but she is also going to be fulfilling her role as the first ever "Educator Astronaut", conducting some lessons in space which will be seen by pupils down here on the ground.
"So what?" some of you just asked, I'm sure. "Why is this such a big deal to you?" Well, it's a big deal because I myself do a lot of "Outreach" work in schools here in the UK - going into schools to talk to kids about astronomy, space exploration and science, showing the latest amazing images from Mars and Saturn etc and generally 'spreading the word' about space, and soon after the loss of Challenger I wrote to Barbara just to wish her well and tell her that I hoped she'd fly one day. To my amazement, I received a lovely reply from Barbara, in which she - and I still can't believe this to this day - thanked me for my work for the space program. She also sent me a lovely, personally-signed copy of her astronaut portrait, and one of the "Teacher In Space" mission patches, both of which obviously mean a lot to me, and I'll have them to hand during Barbara's launch and throughout her mission.
So, I'll admit, this mission means more to me than most, and I'll post updates on it here as it progresses. I hope you'll follow it closely too, particularly if you're one of the people who have grown a bit blase about the shuttle program, and take it for granted after all these years. There's nothing to be taken for granted, believe me. Every shuttle launch pokes fate in the eye with a very sharp stick, and every astronaut who gets strapped into an orbiter knows full well that soon they're basically going to be riding a small nuclear explosion into space, sat inside an oversized Coke can. Modern day astronauts don't get the hero worship or even the everyday recognition of the figures from the days of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, but every one of them is a pioneer, and a brave one at that. Barbara Morgan's "daytime" job is hard enough - teachers are underpaid, undervalued and taken for granted, and I have nothing but respect for them, having worked alongside so many of them for so long - but to be an astronaut too, to go through all the training AGAIN after all those years of waiting... well, I really can't find the words right now to describe how much I admire her.
You can read a couple of interviews with Barbara here, just scroll down the page to the individual crew biogs. In the meantime, here's the mission's official patch, showing the shuttle rising to meet the International Space Station, and the "Educator Astronaut" symbol - a flaming torch - next to Barbara's name...
So, this is just to let you all know that the next shuttle mission is going to be higher profile than many of late, and to ask you all to wish Barbara, silently or publicly, "Godspeed".
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7/16/07 6:26 PM
-Paul
http://journals.aol.ca/plittl