Southeast : Bellflower Students Link Up With Orbiting Cosmonaut

Never mind the ability to produce new superconducting metals.

For many of the Bellflower High School students watching a Russian cosmonaut perform science experiments in zero gravity, the most attractive benefits of weightlessness were free-form acrobatics and water spheres.

Culminating three months of preparation that included Russian lessons and an interdisciplinary space course, nearly 100 eighth-graders watched Wednesday morning and conversed with Yuri Usachev, a flight engineer aboard the Mir space station.

Usachev drifted slowly across video monitors in the school’s library as he demonstrated the application of inertia, momentum and surface tension to space flight. The students had conducted the same experiments but produced, of course, wildly different results.

“I learned a lot about space,” said student Christina Carrillo. Although not excited about pursuing a career in space travel, she said weightlessness looks fun.

Event organizers said that Wednesday was the first time U.S. students have been able to speak with orbiting Russian cosmonauts.

“Here our students are experiencing space travel firsthand,” announced Principal Rick Kemppainen minutes before technicians connected the two-way audio and video link. The library was jammed with at least 200 students, teachers, school officials and reporters.

Arranged by San Diego-based International Space Enterprises, the program was free to the school, thanks to sponsorships from Pepsi-Cola International, Rockwell International and other companies.

The experience represented several firsts for student Rachel Walsh.

“I never [before] got to talk to people from different countries,” she said. “I never got to actually talk to them when they were in space.”