Shuttle Veteran Lets Students Take Their Best Space Shots

Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz has boarded a NASA space shuttle, flown above Earth’s atmosphere and circled the planet 252 times. But this--this was hard work.

Friday, he was rocketed by no-holds barred questions from 1,800 students at three Orange County schools on topics such as bathroom habits in space and UFOs. Tough crowd.

Chang-Diaz, 46, is a veteran of five space shuttle missions and was the first Latino in space. He said he hoped to tantalize a post-moon-landing generation with the possibility of a mission to Mars. His presentations were organized by Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove).

At Diamond Elementary School in Santa Ana, little arms shot up one after the other after watching a videotape of Chang-Diaz’s shuttle missions. He took every question seriously and with fatherly good humor. (After all, he has four kids of his own.)

“How do you go to the bathroom?” asked one youngster.

Classmates giggled, teachers rolled their eyes.

But Chang-Diaz said the question was important and answered promptly: “We are potty trained.”

“Do you have beds to sleep on?” one student piped up.

“We don’t need to lie down,” he answered patiently. “We just stand up and just close our eyes.”

“Did you ever walk on the moon?”

He hadn’t.

Another student had a more cosmic question.

“Does space ever end?” That has yet to be answered, Chang-Diaz said.

At Sycamore Junior High School in Anaheim, and at Santiago High School in Garden Grove, Chang-Diaz took his speech up a notch. He challenged the students to think about becoming scientists and gave out his e-mail address, saying they could contact him with any questions.

At Santiago High,, one student asked about UFOs.

He doesn’t think that much about UFOs, the astronaut said, but he does think a lot about extraterrestrial life.

“I think it’s pretentious of us to think of ourselves as alone,” Chang-Diaz said. “I think life elsewhere is more the norm than the exception.”

At the high school, Chang-Diaz also explained the technological challenges of a mission to Mars.

Using today’s technology, the mission would take 10 months to get from Earth to the red planet, Chang-Diaz explained. But so much time in space would cause the astronauts’ bones to become brittle and their hearts to weaken.

*

“We need to get there fast,” Chang-Diaz said.

Perhaps scientists will be able to reduce that time to 90 days and astronauts will be able to stay on Mars for a full Martian year--the equivalent of about two Earth years, he said.

“When you see that tiny planet we call Earth and you look and see that other tiny planet Mars, you see how lonely you are,” he said.

But perhaps not as lonely as people think. Chang-Diaz explained how a meteorite fragment from Mars recently revealed the possibility of past life on the planet.

“It would change completely the way we think of ourselves,” he said.

The idea was indeed appealing.

“He was getting me all into it,” said 15-year-old Mike Moraz. “I’ve always been into space travel and what’s out there--the moon and the stars. I have ever since I was little, just like him.”

An 11-year-old Diamond Elementary student was especially inspired.

“At first I thought I wanted to be an astronaut, and then I changed my mind and thought no,” Benjamin Alfaro said. “But now after this, I want to be an astronaut again.’