Kids learn about stars and snacks
Staff reporter
More than 100 children at the Tatnall School in Greenville learned Tuesday
morning about being an astronaut from the real thing.
And they didn't just learn about freeze-dried ice cream. Former space
shuttle astronaut Kenneth Reightler Jr. let them in on an important secret:
One of the desserts eaten by real astronauts is available in any grocery
store.
Reightler held up a snack cake shrink-wrapped in plastic and said, "this
brownie is really a Little Debbie," and the preschoolers and kindergartners
nodded approvingly. "Don't tell anybody, but you could buy these, too."
Clad in his NASA flight jacket, Reightler told the children about how
astronauts eat and sleep in space and how gravity works.
He also tried to inspire them the way he was inspired by space when he was
their age, before America even had a real space program.
Reightler left the space program five years ago after two shuttle missions -
including the first joint U.S.-Russian flight in 1994 - to work for Lockheed
Martin Corp., where he is vice president of science, engineering, analysis
and test operations.
He stopped at Tatnall on a tour of Philadelphia-area schools because
Lockheed Martin's vice president of communications, Wendy Owen, has a child
who attends the school. He also spoke to Tatnall's middle-school students.
Reightler was born in 1951, seven years before NASA was created.
"It was all our imagination," Reightler said. "But in my imagination, I was
already in space."
But the children also had some important questions.
"Have you ever seen an alien in space?" asked 6-year-old kindergartner
Amanda Ploener.
No, he hadn't, but he had seen some other neat things. Looking down from
space, "you really feel like you're not really attached to the Earth."
"How did the astronauts plant the flag on the moon?" asked 6-year-old
kindergartner Barbara Edmonds.
A flag had to be made with special supports to make it look like it was
flapping in the wind when there was no air on the moon.
"You know those flags are still up there on the moon?" Reightler said.
"They'll probably be up there forever."
Reightler also gave students a guided tour of the galaxy inside an
inflatable planetarium loaned by Brandywood Elementary School.
A projector displayed many of the same stars and constellations Reightler
saw from space on the inside of the canvas dome, which was more than eight
feet tall.
"Even today on the space shuttle, we use the stars to help us find where we
are," he told several dozen children inside.
The students had been working on space-related projects to get ready for
Reightler's visit.
Children in Patty Conomon's preschool class made a model of the space
shuttle's cabin in their play area, complete with a control panel and a
panoramic view of the planets on black construction paper.
Soon after meeting Reightler, 4-year-old Aaron Colbourn was behind the
controls of the ship.
He liked the idea of being an astronaut but he also wanted to be a
firefighter when he grew up. "I'll do one on one day and the other another
day," Colbourn said.