Greetings, Earthlings
Students at Pinehurst School had a guest speaker traveling 17,500 miles per hour this morning.
Richard Garriot, a private astronaut aboard the International Space Station more than 200 miles above the earth, answered questions via radio about sleeping and cooking in space, dealing with rocket sickness and the amazing view. Garriot, a former video game developer and the son of NASA astronaut Owen Garriot, launched aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft eight days ago.
Students had just 12 minutes to speak with Garriot, using contacts with ground stations in Hawaii and California, before he was out of range over the Pacific Ocean.
"I already have a different opinion of the size and scale of the world," he said about the planet he orbits every 90 minutes. "The world is much more small and fragile than I thought before."
The stars don't twinkle in space like they do on Earth, but he gets to see the sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes, he said. Getting dressed is hard because gravity keeps your pants legs straight, and he misses the burgers and pizza that aren't included in his dehydrated diet.
About 80 percent of people get rocket sick, known as space adaptation sickness, he said. For Garriot, that meant four days of bad headaches similar to having a cold.
And when he wakes up, his first reaction is "Which way is up?" and he has to find all his stuff that floated away during the night, he said.
"The scariest parts are probably launch and re-entry," he said, "but they're also the most exciting." He's really afraid of making mistakes on the experiments he is working on while he is there, he said.
The 18-student school got the opportunity to grill Garriot, who will be in space 12 days, because of the year-and-a-half effort by local amateur radio operator Gene Davies. Davies has been involved with hand radio and the space program since the two joined forces about 15 years ago, he said. Arranging this morning's brief conversation required moving up a long waiting list and answering a "million" questions from NASA, such as his radio capabilities, size of the school and pre-approval of all the kids' questions.
"It's a relief because there's a thousand things that can go wrong," he said. "A few of them did, but it didn't end the contact, and we're thrilled it was a success."
Davies also climbed up on the roof of the school to attach a student-assembled satellite that captured pictures and radio communication from the space station.
"For the last week or so, suddenly in the middle of math class, we'd hear the space station talk," said Jim Impara, one of the two full-time teachers at the school.
The chat with Garriot was the grand finale of a two-week study of space and the space station, Impara said. Students arrived at 7 a.m. for the event, more than an hour before classes usually begin, buzzing about their visitor from space.
"I've always thought it would really suck to eat freeze-dried food," said eighth-grader Jacob Coon, 13. Coon himself has talked to amateur radio operators in Japan, Hawaii and Alaska and thought it was "really cool" to talk to outer space.
"It's kind of funny," said third-grader Trenton Soderberg, 9, who asked the question about rocket sickness. "I can't believe they really get sick."
Wendy Fullerton, the administrator of the K-8 Pinehurst School District said the conversation was a great opportunity for enrichment and made the curriculum come alive.
"We're such a small school, this is a huge honor that they picked us," she said. "We were really lucky to have Gene Davies available and enthusiastic about this project, because without him, we could never have done it."
Staff writer Julie French can be reached at 482-3456 ext. 227 or jfrench@dailytidings.com.
