|
 |
|
|
|
Profile: Teacher may walk on the moon |
|
|
|
Written On: September/October 2006 |
|
|
|
Written By: Charles Henry Thomas |
|
|
|
Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, a 31-year old science teacher from Vancouver’s Hudson Bay High School, could be the first woman to walk on the moon. She is one of 11 new astronauts who have completed two years of rigorous training and is now awaiting her turn to fly.
No one is more excited about the future of space exploration than Metcalf-Lindenburger. Recently relocated to Houston, she is busy learning to fly T-38 jets and perfecting her Russian language skills at the Johnson Space Center. Astronauts come from many countries, but Americans and Russians dominate their ranks.
Metcalf-Lindenburger is a 1997 Whitman College graduate with a degree in geology. A Colorado native, she attended the Walla Walla campus to run track and cross country and went on to Central Washington University to earn her teaching certificate. Dottie and her husband, Jason, were teachers in Vancouver. Jason now teaches in Houston.
Metcalf-Lindenburger is not the first woman with Washington roots to be selected for space flight. Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, a native of Outlook in southcentral Washington, flew five missions on space shuttles. Dunbar, one of a dozen University of Washington graduates to join NASA, earned her masters degree in ceramic engineering at UW before joining Boeing as a researcher. NASA selected her in 1980, and, now retired, she is president of the Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
In all, 14 Washingtonians have been astronauts. Unfortunately, not all returned safely to Earth. Francis R. "Dick" Scobee of Cle Elum was commanding the Challenger when it exploded shortly after launch on Jan. 28, 1986. Cheney’s Michael Anderson died on February 1, 2003, when the Columbia and its crew perished during re-entry.
Metcalf-Lindenburger understands the risks but believes the space program is essential to America and the future of humanity. It is a risk that she and her colleagues at NASA believe we must take.
Metcalf-Lindenburger became interested in becoming an astronaut when one of her students asked her how astronauts use the bathroom in space. "It was the joke around Hudson Bay," math teacher Estaban Delgadillo recalls, "but it got Dottie thinking, and pretty soon she was asking herself: Why not?" When she saw a NASA posting for the educator-astronaut position, she applied, and the rest is history.
Metcalf-Lindenburger is not the only teacher in the current class of astronauts. There are three who have completed the two years of rigorous training, but given the backlog of missions and the more than 100 astronauts at NASA, it is doubtful Metcalf-Lindenburger will be in space soon. During a recent tour of the Johnson Space Center, she said astronauts are usually in the program for up to a decade before they are assigned a mission.
"You have to be patient and train for the day when it is your turn," she said. For example, Barbara Morgan, an Idaho elementary school teacher, was the alternative to Christa McAulliffe, the Maine teacher killed on the Challenger. After Challenger, she went back to Idaho waiting to be recalled. She was then scheduled to fly on the Columbia before it perished. Morgan has been training at the Johnson Space Center since 1998, and if things continue as scheduled, she could fly this year.
By the time Metcalf-Lindenburger has her turn in space, the current shuttle will probably be retired and the International Space Station completed. By then, there should be a new space shuttle and, with a little luck and America’s continued commitment to space, NASA will be headed back to the moon or Mars.
|
|
|
|
