Inner-City Kids View Outer Space
Sure, a space station is supposed to be for research, but the children touring the life-size space station model at McDonnell Douglas thought sleeping in zero gravity looked like more fun.
“It was nice,” said 10-year-old Kaz Straight, who lives in the Nickerson Gardens housing project in Watts. “I would like to sleep on the wall.”
Straight and 30 other children from housing projects throughout Los Angeles County were given a tour of the model of Space Station Freedom as part of an effort to expose inner-city children to career possibilities in science and technology.
The station is scheduled for completion in the year 2000, and will be a joint effort between the U.S., Canadian and Japanese governments. It will cost an estimated $30 billion and consist of several large modules equipped as research facilities and living quarters.
The tour and career talks by McDonnell Douglas employees were coordinated by Passages to Success, a fledgling Los Angeles civic group, and the Coleman/McNair Society at McDonnell Douglas. Although the tour was initiated by Passages to Success President Connie King, it was the first effort by the society to reach out to children beyond Orange County, signifying the start of the group’s broader outreach efforts.
“We are hoping this will turn into a large collaboration that will offer opportunity to kids in aerospace and technical fields, professions that have historically been closed to them,” said Tyrone Sykes, president of the society’s Orange County chapter.
Named after Bessy Coleman, the first black aviator, and Ronald McNair, the African-American astronaut who died in the space shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, the society is composed of about 50 African-American employees at McDonnell Douglas’ Huntington Beach facility.
Before the youngsters’ tour, some of the society’s board members talked about their work to give encouragement to the students. The children, who ranged from pre-adolescent to early teens, heard from professionals in manufacturing, engineering, and pricing and estimating.
No one mentioned the layoffs that have dogged the aerospace industry in Southern California during the recession, or the fact that Space Station Freedom was just spared the budget ax by the Clinton Administration. Sykes said the fact that the industry is going through a downturn doesn’t mean that children should be discouraged from pursuing careers in scientific and technical fields.
“There’s always been a need through history and there will always be a need,” he said. “I would still encourage it.”
King, who founded Passages to Success with four other women after the Los Angeles riots of last April, said the main goal was to help children from primarily poor and minority areas. “We are trying to develop a well-organized program for science and math opportunities,” she said. “We don’t know whose life we may be able to affect.”
She said she hopes to bring more groups in to tour the McDonnell Douglas facility and to listen to minority professionals talk about their careers. Her group is also trying to raise money to send some children to a space camp in Florida.
Most of the children on the tour seemed fascinated by the mannequin in a suspended sleeping position in one of the modules, but didn’t appear keen on living in a space station.
Nicolas Vergara, a 12-year-old from San Pedro, said he thought the research performed aboard the station might result in a cure for AIDS or cancer, but when it comes to living on board, he added: “I might go there on vacation.”
