Sky’s the Limit : Laser beams. Robotics. Shuttle landings. It’s all part of Bettye and Hal Walker’s aim to plant the seeds of science in kids.

It is 3:30 on a weekday. Children blow into the neatly appointed Science and Learning Discovery Center in Baldwin Hills with an after-school boisterous ness, happily unloading backpacks, lunch boxes, sweaters forgotten as morning’s chill yielded to an early sun.

The activity intensifies the heat in the place, but the 25 children barely notice. With a practiced air, they settle in to the center’s many offerings: a computer bank, a science lab and laser room, a round-table drawing session that produces swift renderings of rockets, moon craters and comets.

“Who does that remind you of?” a parent volunteer asks 5-year-old Amanda Walker, pointing to another child’s portrait of a space-suited astronaut.

Amanda’s crayon pauses only a moment before returning to her loopy sketch of an orbiter.

“Dr. Bernard Harris,” she pronounces in an impossibly tiny but sure voice. “The first African American to walk in space.”

From across the room, Hildreth (Hal) Walker Jr., 61, notes the exchange and beams. The retired laser scientist and his wife, Bettye, founded the center at 3639 La Brea Ave. last August as a way of introducing black children to science and technology--subjects they say have traditionally been all but ignored in black communities.

Exposure to such information is more critical than ever. Technology now touches nearly every aspect of daily life--from education to entertainment to the workplace. And each development brings social, economic and political changes that could help, or hinder, black people.

To illustrate, Hal Walker cites a substance under research that may prove to be an antidote to crack and cocaine addiction.

Black people “have been approaching social progress in a rather limited way--focusing on survival things like getting minimum-wage jobs,” says Walker, a tall, affable man whose quick smile radiates an easy charm. “Look, when they build those space stations, they won’t be needing janitors to sweep them. They’ll need people versed in certain kinds of knowledge and skill.”

To those struggling with the disproportionate poverty and under-education of this country’s black populace, the Walkers may seem to be shooting the moon. Yet the couple insists that for black youth, the future must happen now, even if they can only make it happen with a small group.

“We’ve got a plan,” says Bettye Walker, a retired educator with the Los Angeles and Compton unified school districts who shares her husband’s boundless enthusiasm. “No one looks at how technology could take care of a lot of inner-city problems by improving the quality of life. And for all the kids who say, ‘I was never good in science; I was never good in math,’ I say you learn because someone nurtures you and pushes you. That’s my responsibility.”

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Both Walkers grew up in tight-knit (if segregated) communities where individual achievements were considered sources of pride for the whole neighborhood.

And though young Hal was hard-pressed to find scientist role models among the working-class folk on L.A.’s old Eastside, he sought out friends who shared his fascination with crystal radio sets, ray guns and soapbox cars.

His love of tinkering solidified at Lafayette Junior High, where an electrics shop teacher recognized his mechanical aptitude and encouraged Walker to tackle more complex projects after school. The most technical gadgets he could find then were the light and sound control boards in the school theater, and he established himself as stage crew manager at Lafayette, then at Jefferson High. He briefly considered acting, but his favorite role was behind the scenes. He set his sights on becoming a camera operator in Hollywood.

But toward the end of his senior year in 1951, a career counselor nearly dealt his dream a death blow.

“He quickly pointed out to me that there were no opportunities for blacks. Camera work was something you just could not do,” Walker recalls. “Up to that point, I hadn’t considered race an obstruction. . . . I had been doing the kind of work I wanted to do all along. Of course, my world was very circumscribed--it rarely extended west of the Coliseum.”

It was indeed a small world, but one that had given Walker a determination that enabled him to steadily build a career.

He enlisted in the Navy, where he had to once again fight for the chance to pursue an opportunity not ordinarily open to blacks. Navy officials wanted Walker to sign up for general services--”delivery work, janitorial work, the same sorts of things we did in civilian life.” Walker got his way and enlisted as a seaman, a position that led to his becoming a shipboard electrician who frequently served aboard aircraft carriers. It was that experience, Walker says, that later impressed McDonnell Douglas enough to offer him a job in the radar department.

It was the mid-1950s and aerospace was just beginning to take off. Walker landed his first big project with RCA as an electronics field engineer with a team setting up the country’s first ballistic missile early warning system.

Years as a regional sales manager for Santa Monica-based Korad Lasers followed, then in 1965 another breakthrough: Walker began working in the space program and helped develop lunar radar equipment for the historic first flight to the moon four years later. He was honored last year as a key figure in that event at the opening of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.

“The space technology field was developing right in front of my eyes,” says Walker, who finished out his career with Hughes Aircraft, retiring in 1989. “I could create a role, a part for myself in it.”

These days, he says, “Young people are allowing circumstances, rather than a sense of what they want, to dictate everything. That’s why they’re disillusioned.”

Disillusionment very nearly took Bettye Walker out of the field in which she strove so hard to excel: Education. In the early 1980s, the Washington, D.C., native and school district administrator told her father that she believed “the system had broken down. People were using education as a political springboard. You can’t do that with human lives. I said, ‘If this isn’t about kids, I don’t want to do it.’ ”

She visited Africa in 1983 to clear her head, only to barely make it back to the States after a harrowing visit to Nigeria that landed her in the middle of a civil war.

“My life was spared. That was a sign,” she says. “My dad said, ‘You should not leave education.’ ”

Finding Hal, she says, was another sign of providence. During a family visit to Washington in 1980, Bettye dropped in at a space exploration seminar given by NASA. There she met Hal, who she discovered shared her interest not only in space, but in many other things as well.

“From that day on,” she says, “we’ve been a team.”

With Hal’s encouragement, Bettye launched independent educational projects guided by a learning-is-fun philosophy. Distressed by crime-saturated news about young black men, she formed a mentoring program with UCLA called B-MAP--the Black Male Achievement Project--to cultivate ambition and self-discipline in students at Bunche Elementary School in Compton, where she was principal. B-MAP quickly evolved into the African American Male Achievers Network (A-MAN), which expanded to include boys 5 to 17 and, under Hal’s tutelage, emphasized technology and the sciences.

Bettye Walker retired from the school district in 1987 to devote more time to the project.

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In addition to lab work and laser demonstrations, the Discovery Center offers math and science tutoring, sessions in robotics and other mechanical devices, and trips to Cape Canaveral and Edwards Air Force Base to watch space shuttle launchings and landings.

The Walkers are planting seeds of information that, given the proper care, will flourish in future generations.

“Our overall purpose is to grow a common interest in science, not to make 1,000 scientists,” Hal Walker explains. “These kids here are really the role models. They prove that if you introduce something in an interesting way, they’ll comply without resistance.”

The Walkers’ grandson Justin, 13--a longtime A-MAN member--likens his many hours at the Discovery Center to sports training. “Science is like basketball,” he says. “It’s a game. You just have to learn the rules, that’s all.”

Accolades cover the walls: newspaper clippings lauding the Walkers; photos, rows of plaques and certificates delivering good wishes from politicians and supporters. But displayed most prominently is a poster board tacked with individual photos of the A-MAN members, all wearing crisp white shirts, black ties and unabashedly proud smiles.

“They teach you here that you can be anything in life you want to be,” says Kendrick Johnson, a shy 13-year-old who travels from Compton three afternoons a week. “I want to be a neurosurgeon and a minister, not a scientist, but what I learn here will help that.”

Fellow A-MAN member and aspiring astronaut Rahim Miller eagerly rattles off facts about the nature of gravitational force, pioneering black female astronaut Mae Jamison, how atmospheric pressure and gravity vary from planet to planet.

“Actually, I wasn’t interested in [space science] until fourth grade,” he says. “I think now I’d like to be a doctor who treats astronauts who get sick on the job . . . aerospace medicine, I guess.”

Personal conduct is at least as important to the Walkers as education and scientific preparation. A-MAN members regularly open and close meetings with a pledge affirming the group’s tenets of courteousness, fairness to others and integrity. Hal and Bettye are quick to chastise members who exhibit rudeness, and insist on parent involvement as volunteer tutors and administrative assistants. But Bettye Walker says the aim of the latter requirement is to educate the parents in science along with their children; computers are checked out to all A-MAN households for that purpose.

Kendrick’s father, Kenneth Johnson, believes the mandate of partnership is a fruitful one.

“I’ve been involved in this for a long time, and I really see the difference in Kendrick, in his willingness to learn and experiment and not be afraid,” says Johnson, a manager at an Alpha Beta store.

“He’s doing things I never had the chance to experience. Everything now is based in science. You can be the smartest kid in the world, but you have to be exposed to things in order to get it.”

As productive as the Discovery Center seems to be, it suffers from the same financial perils as do many nonprofit groups these days. Computers and other equipment were donated by Hughes Aircraft and other outfits, but the Walkers, anticipating more children, are searching for more. Rent on the office suite was several months behind until a donation from Shell Oil came through to pick up the slack.

But with optimism that seems as unshakable as scientific fact, the Walkers hope to find the center a larger home--ideally the Baldwin Theater, a closed-down movie house within sight of their current space. The issue is less about money, Hal Walker says, than about belief and a willingness to imagine.

Others are starting to catch the fire: UCLA recently started training three seventh-grade A-MAN members in biology and computer lab work in a new program funded by the Department of Energy. The program was designed for high school seniors, but the Walkers convinced UCLA officials that if they were serious about educating young people, they had to start early.

Dr. John Hart, outreach director of UCLA’s Structural Biology and Molecular Medicine lab, says he only had to look around campus. “Around the science buildings, black students are totally underrepresented. We decided to wanted to implement exposure of the sciences to blacks, and Hal and Bettye already had a structure in place with A-MAN,” says Hart, who is also organizing a book drive at UCLA to start a library at the Discovery Center. “We were very impressed with them, with their unlimited energy. Those kids are their life.”

For Hari Williams, at 19 the senior member of the A-MAN group, the Walkers’ efforts have helped steer him toward success.

“Without a career, and without the kind of information they teach here, you really can’t make it in society,” says Williams, who plans to attend Howard University and major in business. “There’s nothing for youth out there. One day I want to come back to Compton and build a Y. I’ve seen so many role models--lawyers, accountants, scientists--that I’ve learned to push myself. I know I can do it.”