Astronaut Tells Students to Aim for the Stars

LYNWOOD —  Upon meeting an astronaut for the first time Monday, 12-year-old Eric Williams nearly jumped out of his seat to ask a question he had to have answered.

“Are there any plans to put children in space?” the fifth-grader asked.

Astronaut Guion Bluford told the student the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had no immediate plans to send children into space.

However, Bluford urged Williams and other inner-city students in the audience at Lynwood High to start preparing today for future jobs in space through serious study of math and science.

“In 10 years or more NASA will build a space station in space,” Bluford said. “People will be needed to work in space. Be prepared.”

Addressed 4,000 in One Day

Bluford, 43, who in 1983 became the first black American in space, was on a visit to Lynwood, Compton and Inglewood district schools to help launch a space agency program aimed at interesting inner-city youths in science careers. By the end of the day, he had talked to more than 4,000 students.

The 3-year-old nationwide project, called the Urban Communities Enrichment Program, is being offered in Southern California for the first time. NASA is paying the local program’s entire cost--about $100,000.

Elementary and junior high students from the three districts will receive classroom instruction from space agency teachers. The teachers will visit Lynwood schools this week, Compton next month and Inglewood in March.

Students will see films about space and be taught theory as well as practical application, such as how to build model rockets and airplanes.

“We hope this program will motivate not only the students but their parents to see that the children can prepare themselves for careers in such fields as engineering and business,” said Supt. Rex Fortune of the Inglewood Unified School District.

Bluford, who spoke to about 2,000 students in the Inglewood district, was an inspiration to them, Fortune said. “It was exciting.”

Bluford, born and reared in an inner-city Philadelphia neighborhood, was a mission specialist on the third flight of the space shuttle Challenger in August, 1983. A colonel in the Air Force, he has a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degrees and a doctorate from the Air Force Institute of Technology. He flew combat missions in Vietnam and is training to take another space flight in September.

In addition to his space adventures, speakers introducing Bluford to student assemblies throughout the day always stirred the audiences’ attention by saying he attended Overbrook High School in Philadelphia with Wilt Chamberlain.

Bluford showed the students a film of his space flight. They laughed and applauded while watching the astronauts and their food and books float through the spaceship.

Bluford also answered questions, the most popular being:

- “How did it feel being in space?”

“Like swimming under water without the water. You floated around a lot. Moving around by pushing off walls.”

- “How did you feel during takeoff?”

“Like I was in a very fast elevator, traveling 25 times faster than sound.”

- “What did you eat?”

“Dehydrated foods that looked like television dinners.”

Bluford said in an interview that he saw himself as a role model for minority youths “to let them know that the opportunity is there. I encourage them to dream, to work hard and they will succeed.”

Technological Changes

Bluford said he tries to impress upon the students how fast the world changes technologically and how they must be prepared to compete.

“I grew up in an area where there was no television,” he said. “Today, in a short span of 40 years, there are TV wristwatches. The computers we use today will soon be obsolete.”

Bluford said he encourages students “to not be spectators or hangers-on, sitting on the fringes, but active participants in their environment.”

Students like Tryone Stewart, 13, a Compton eighth-grader, were impressed and encouraged.

“I liked your sermon. It had a message,” said Stewart, who rushed to shake Bluford’s hand.

“Someday,” Stewart said, beaming, “I might want to become an astronaut.”