On Challenger’s Anniversary, Pupils Accept Challenge

It’s going to take a while after Challenger to get back into space, but we’re certainly going to be able to recuperate and gain our place in space. After all, we belong out there.

--Richard Horrmann, president of the Space Shuttle Club at Workman High School in Industry.

Today, students in many Southern California schools will mark the first anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster with a moment of silence for the seven crew members who died in the accident, and take time to reflect on the space program and offer a look toward its future.

Like past generations of Americans, fascinated by the phenomena of their times--electric light, horseless carriages and machines that could fly--many of today’s youngsters are turned on by space. And that interest has only increased in the year following the Challenger explosion.

“These kids follow the space shuttle and Voyager like we did when Sputnik went up,” said Rick Wetzell, science teacher for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at Sharp Avenue Elementary School in Pacoima. “They’re interested in the technology and they know that space is their future.”

A Moment of Silence

Wetzell, who has taught at Sharp for 19 years, is one of many science teachers planning on observing a moment of silence to commemorate the Challenger crew members in each of his classes today.

Sylmar Elementary held its memorial ceremony Tuesday, dedicating a display with the Challenger crew’s pictures and a mural of the Challenger painted by the students. Other schools, from the San Fernando Valley to the beach cities, will observe the anniversary, too, some with class discussions of the space program, others by placing flowers at shuttle memorials and wearing black ribbons on their shirts.

Wetzell also will talk with his students about the future of the space program. “We’ve been talking about it in an ongoing way since the accident, and we’ll talk some more on Wednesday,” he said.

Wetzell stood in the warm sunshine at the school’s outdoor McAuliffe Science Center after conducting an experiment on air pressure and water Monday morning, and listened to some of his sixth-graders discussing the Challenger. He said: “They understand that it was an accident. They know that you try to do what you can to prevent such a thing, there are always risks involved. But they say, ‘Hey, let’s go up there anyway.’ ”

Sharp’s outdoor science center, completed last spring, was named in honor of Christa McAuliffe, the Concord, N.H., teacher who was to have been the first teacher in space, but lost her life when the Challenger blew up. At the edge of the center’s work space in the courtyard of the school, a red, white and blue sign reads: “McAuliffe Science Center--Come Touch Tomorrow.”

There also are, hanging under the sign in a plexiglass frame, photos of McAuliffe and the other crew members, one of the shuttle Challenger and a patch from a NASA jacket.

“I would still go (up in space), but I still feel what other people feel, that how it came out was sad,” Claudia Ochoa, 11, said of the Challenger explosion.

“I wouldn’t go, because it could happen again, but I would like to work on the shuttles, fixing the engines. I could do that,” said 12-year-old Gilbert Garcia.

“I’d like to build the shuttle myself and go up there,” Tony Preciado, 12, told the group.

“Christa McAuliffe took the risk. She was responsible. You have to take the risk,” said Elena Casarez, 11.

“I’d go, just to check out the things up there,” said Juan Chavez, 12. “Go to the moon, or Mars. Do you think there are people up there?”

Last month, George O’Neel, an aerospace education specialist from the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Northern California, came to Sharp to speak to the youngsters as part of NASA’s space education program in U.S. schools.

“He showed them a heat-resistant tile that is used on the shuttles and one of the kids got to put on a space suit,” Wetzell said. “They were really excited about that. But the thing that got the kids the most excited was was how you go to the bathroom in space. They relate to practical things like that.”

Wetzell explained what O’Neel had told the students about zero gravity in the shuttle and how a person had to hold onto a pole and back in to the bathroom area called a “target.”

“He told them that the area has a series of mirrors on the top and the side so you can guide yourself toward the target,” Wetzell said. “Then he played a tape of sound of a toilet flushing in space. It sounded like a rocket going off. The kids all thought that was incredible.”

Interest Increases

Throughout 1986, officials of the Young Astronauts Council, a national organization of space exploration clubs headquartered in Washington, D.C., saw an increase in space program participation by America’s youth.

“We definitely saw an increased interest in space from young people,” said Dr. Frank Withrow, director of technology services of Young Astronauts Council. “We started with about 5,000 chapters at the first of 1986, before the disaster, and ended last year with about 11,000 nationwide. That’s about 250,000 to 300,000 youngsters.”

Founded in 1984, the Young Astronauts Council distributes monthly materials on space to schoolteachers and schools belonging to the council (dues are $20 a year, but the major program costs are underwritten by corporate sponsors). The programs are geared toward elementary and junior high school science and math students and can be used in classrooms or as club activities after school.

There are 700 chapters of the council in California, most of them in the Southern California area.

“Ninety percent of our materials are used in regular classrooms,” Withrow said. “And Japan and Canada have adopted the program, too. We have toys that teach, jacks, gyroscopes, paddle balls that they saw on TV. When Sen. Jake Garn went up, he had a paper airplane. Then, we have a recycled science program, I call it kitchen science, using everyday soda pop bottles, for instance. It’s an inexpensive program that demonstrates the principles of science. And there are posters that NASA helps us with.

“We got a lot of letters from young people saying, ‘it’s too bad what happened to Challenger, but keep up the space program. Going into space is the last frontier,’ ” Withrow said.

“Current space professionals think about working in space,” Withrow said. “The kids are dreaming about settling Mars and the moon.”

“From a teacher’s point of view, the Young Astronauts program is a dream,” said Sandy Bagley, science teacher at Brentwood Science elementary magnet school who belongs to the Washington-based group. “It’s such a versatile program that you can pick and chose what you want . . . The real value of this program is that it turns them on by experimenting first and reading about it later.”

Today, Bagley plans to hold discussions in her science classes about the space program and its future after Challenger. “We’ll be talking about improved safety standards in the space program and the new degree of caution after the disaster. When you think in terms of what we’re preparing this generation for, we better be preparing them in math and sciences and space things, because that’s where they’re going.”

State-of-the-Art Space Labs

Dee Strange, science teacher at Hermosa Valley School in Hermosa Beach, will commemorate the space accident with a moment of silence for the Challenger crew in her sixth-grade classes on Wednesday in the school’s Challenger Science Lab.

A newly completed school, Hermosa Valley has two state-of-the-art science laboratories, one for kindergarten through fourth grade, the other for fifth through eighth grade. The Challenger Science Lab was named so in honor of teacher McAuliffe and payload specialist Gregory Jarvis, a Hermosa Beach resident, who also was killed aboard Challenger.

In Hermosa Beach, there also is a special memorial fund to raise money to build a rest stop for bicyclists on the Strand, where Jarvis often cycled.

Strange, who has taught in the Hermosa Beach City School District for 29 years, said she particularly felt the Challenger tragedy because of her own involvement.

“Only this week have I been able to talk about it without crying,” she said. “I was one of 930 teachers in California who applied to go. I was a reject, but I still feel a part of the program.

“When Challenger went off, every kid ran in to see it and they were cheering,” Strange continued. Then the next moment, it happened, and they were stunned and in tears. Later, they asked me if I would reapply to go if I could, knowing what happened. I said I certainly would. I could get hit out on the Pacific Coast Highway. Going into space, those are the risks a person takes knowingly. Now, I would have some reservations, and I would expect some things to be changed. But a lot has been learned, unfortunately at the expense of seven wonderful people.”

Ten days ago, Jim Owen, principal of Arnold Elementary School in Cypress, sent off a copy of a special videotape to the principal of Concord High School in Concord, N.H, where Christa McAuliffe taught school before winning NASA’s teacher-in-space competition.

It was a tape made from a multimedia presentation on three slide projectors that Arnold fifth-graders did last May in tribute to the Challenger crew. It is called “Teacher in Space.”

‘Moving Presentation’

“It’s a very moving presentation,” Owens said. “And we sent it to Concord in hopes that they will be able to show it to the whole student body. It honors Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger crew.”

In May, the Arnold students presented their “Teacher in Space” project to the Cypress City Council, on the day the city dedicated a jacaranda tree on the City Hall lawn to the fallen Challenger crew. A plaque at the base of the tree contains the names of the astronauts and the date of the space disaster, Jan. 28, 1986.

“The desire for the space program will go on,” said Owen. “We are still looking forward to that lesson in space.”

The day after the Challenger accident, president Richard Horrmann and other members of the Space Shuttle Club of Workman High in Industry held an emergency meeting. They decided to take the funds they had been collecting for a club trip to Florida to see the Columbia space shuttle launch in March and fashion a time capsule honoring the Challenger crew.

They filled the capsule with a space shuttle tile, sample material of that used for shuttle external tanks, an astronaut flight jacket, a 1986 school yearbook, a biography about the club and literature from NASA. To be opened on Jan. 28, 2011, the capsule was buried in a seven-foot hole on the Workman campus, and topped with a pedestal and plaque.

Wednesday morning, Space Shuttle Club members will meet at the sign and place flowers there in memory of the Challenger crew. They also plan to wear black ribbons on their shirts all day.

Horrmann said he will show a video of news clips about the space program collected over the last year at the school’s career center to club members and other students interested in attending, and talk about the space program a year after the disaster.

‘An Emotional Experience’

Horrmann, the editor of the school newspaper who founded the space club in 1983 with nine members, saw the group grow to 35 last year. “Lots of members became active after the Challenger disaster,” said senior Horrmann, who lives in La Puente. “The night after when we met, every single member was there. It was an emotional experience. We were feeling close to the astronauts and it was a link.”

The Workman space club is gearing up for a Space Week in mid-May this year and will show slide presentations, space models and displays on campus. Members also hope to involve the nearby elementary and junior high schools in the project, as well.

“There will be more shuttles and more teachers in space,” Horrmann said. “And hopefully it will be a much better and much safer program. They’re not going to be so hasty to go up. But we’ll be seeing new generations of shuttles and new generations of astronauts. And people who aren’t the perfect aerospace people with ‘the right stuff,’ but interested in other fields will be going. I am interested in the journalism field, but I’d love to go into space. I would say my heart is in journalism, but my soul is in space.”