Chasing Space

by Leland Melvin

  The Summer of Innovation was going full steam by July, and so was I. Traveling around the country to promote STEM, I constantly encountered teachers and students who were excited about NASA, and they had questions about life in space. One popular question is, “What does it feel like when you first get into space?” That’s easy to answer. Once you’re free of Earth’s gravity, a lot of interesting things happen. You first notice the small items that are unattached to anything in the shuttle start to float. A pen you may have dropped or dust particles—all slowly floating upward although you’re still strapped into your seat. The fun really begins once you’re free of your seat. Once unstrapped, your body floats, too. Astronauts orbiting the Earth are subject to microacceleration. Think of it this way: Once you are free of gravity, if you bump into anything inside the shuttle, you’ll simply bounce, much like a rubber ball thrown against a wall.

  There’s another condition astronauts experience even before they can unstrap themselves—the sensation of tumbling. It occurs once the main engines shut off. Imagine if you were driving and suddenly hit your brakes. You’d lurch forward. It’s a similar but a more intense reaction in space that starts right after the main engines stop. The rate of acceleration changes, but since there’s no gravity, your inner ear and brain react differently. You feel like you’re tumbling, still moving forward in a state of motion. All I can say is thank goodness astronauts are trained to function in gravity-free conditions.

  Every now and then I would get some questions that might appear odd or sound downright strange. I always try to keep an open mind about it because very few people on the planet have ever traveled in space. A student at an international school in Washington, DC, once asked me if I had ever encountered any “green aliens with pink lipstick.” She was about six years old and eagerly awaited my response amid all the laughter and snickering. “I haven’t seen any aliens yet,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. That’s why we continue to explore.” One question I will never forget came from a teacher who pulled me aside after a presentation at the Kennedy Space Center. She seemed nervous and admitted to being a little embarrassed to ask. But she pressed on: “Is sex possible in space, and can a man get ‘hard’ up there?”

  I paused, searching for the right words and an honest answer.

  “Blood flows on the ground,” I said. “Blood flows in space.”

  One additional benefit of my work was the chance to spend time with my friends from the Corps. I connected with Bobby Satcher in DC, where he was preparing to leave NASA and return to practicing orthopedic surgery. We reflected on the good ol’ days in space and shared our concerns about providing opportunities in STEM for underserved populations. I also got to see my old friend Charlie Camarda in New York. We were both on hand when the Enterprise, NASA’s very first space shuttle, joined the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum’s permanent collection.

  In August, I rejoined will.i.am at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, when “Reach for the Stars” was beamed via radio signal about 150 million miles back to Earth from Curiosity’s landing spot on Mars’s Gale Crater. Students from the East Los Angeles neighborhood where will.i.am grew up were on hand at the propulsion lab to witness the historic event. He hoped that enabling the students to see that epic marriage of science and music would inspire them to take the song’s message seriously. The point is to remind people that anything is possible, he said, “If you discipline yourself and dedicate yourself and stand for something. We don’t have to just end up in the hood. But it’s a hard thing. The hardest thing is discipline.”

  I echoed his remarks. “Never give up,” I told them. “People told me that I couldn’t be an astronaut. Whatever you want to be, whatever you dream, you can do, if you put your mind to it.”

  That fall, the man who truly embodied space exploration passed away. Neil Armstrong, who took that first giant leap for mankind on the moon in 1969, died from complications following cardiovascular procedures. Armstrong exemplified a humble, workmanlike attitude. He was kind and shy, very modest and understated in his bearing. He was also a legend, a larger-than-life figure, but I had the impression that he didn’t want to be perceived that way. Instead, he considered himself to be a practical, functioning engineer who focused on his job. Despite his modesty, Armstrong had become the face of NASA in the early days of lunar expeditions. His public memorial service was held at the National Cathedral in Washington, and I was proud to be on hand with most of the Astronaut Corps who knew and worked with Armstrong, men like John Glenn, Gene Cernan, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins.

  “Fate looked down kindly on us when she chose Neil to be the first to venture to another world and to have the opportunity to look back from space at the beauty of our own,” Cernan said during his eulogy. “No one, but no one, no one would have accepted the responsibility of his remarkable accomplishment with more dignity and more grace than Neil Armstrong. He embodied all that is good and all that is great about America.”

  On a personal level, no one embodied the best of our country as well as my father. Every lesson he taught me in some way pointed me toward my possibilities. When I visited my parents in Lynchburg that October, I could see that Dad was slowing down considerably.

  The stroke and ministroke that he had suffered before my last shuttle mission were starting to present some persistent medical issues. Looking at him, I recalled the times when he would snatch me up into the air with one arm and sling me into the water while camping in Cape May, New Jersey, in the summers. This once-powerful athlete, musician, and educator was starting to slump over in his chair after a meal or lose his train of thought as a mild form of dementia started to take hold. Cathy and I were starting to think about the challenges of caring for our aging parents. We had moved them from the Cape Cod on Hilltop Drive because the multiple flights of stairs had become difficult to navigate. Their new home, a single-story condo, was much easier for them to move around in. Like so many other Americans of our generation, Cathy and I were experiencing a role reversal in which we had become responsible for our parents.

  Still wrestling with those changes at home, I headed off to Naples, Italy, for my second International Space Education Board meeting at the International Astronautical Congress. Once again we worked with students and educators to bring space down to everyone. Space agencies representing Japan, South Korea, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and Canada were all working together for the sake of education. I again saw the flight controllers from Germany that I had seen in South Africa the year before. Jovial and familiar with each other, we posed for another picture commemorating the installation of Columbus. For our cultural excursion we took the students to Pompeii and looked at the fossilized devastation resulting from a mountain blowing its top. Seeing the historic aftermath of these interactions between nature and humans made me think of the really big explosions from our solar system forming and giving birth to stars, cosmic collisions spawning galaxies. Articles of faith and scientific concepts swirled in my mind like electrons circling a nucleus. Big bang. Creation. Fission and fusion. Intelligent design. I meditated on the complex relationship between the macro and the micro, the various ways in which one form of something can lead to the other. Small building blocks creating bigger blocks. Atoms blooming into atmosphere. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen combining to form life. How each of us is so wonderfully made.

  Our faith contends that life continues in the hereafter after we have breathed our last breath. Similarly, science observes that energy is neither created nor destroyed but simply takes another form. Both notions provided comfort in November, when we honored the memory of my Penguin classmate Alan “Dex” Poindexter. An accident while on vacation had taken him from us, and we laid him to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on a crisp, sunny day. In addition to joining the Corps together in 1998, Dex and I had flown together on STS-122. His joyful spirit and selfless compassion had helped to make that mission a success, and all those who knew and loved him wo
uld sorely miss him.

  After the ceremony, I had received a call from my wonderful neighbor Melissa that my dog Scout was not doing well. He had been diagnosed with lymphoma and had been treated with steroids. When I arrived home that night, I had to rush him to the hospital because he was not responsive. That same night I put my boy down, bringing our wanderings as a trio to a bittersweet end. Scout had been a kind, loving dog that became instant friends with anyone he met, and his death punctuated a season of loss. With Jake at my side, I returned to Lynchburg for Christmas and bolstered my spirits through bonding with friends and family.

  • • •

  Rested and renewed, I started off the new year with a speech at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance cosponsored by the Roanoke Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the local branch of the NAACP. My talk enabled me to reconnect with my Virginia roots while also helping black Virginians visualize the possibilities for our children. I remember speaking in front of a banner exhorting viewers to “Move forward in difficult times” and reminding them of the Reverend King’s famous maxim: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” To illustrate my point about equal opportunity, I showed a slide of three boys of varying heights trying to watch a baseball game from behind a fence. The first panel, above a caption saying, “This is Equality,” shows the boys standing on boxes of the same height. The two taller boys can see over the fence while the third boy is forced to peer between slats in the fence. The second panel is above a caption that says, “This is Justice.” The illustration shows the two shorter boys comfortably viewing the game from boxes custom-designed for their individual statures, while the tallest boy is able to watch without the benefit of any box at all. The caption above both panels proclaims, “Equality doesn’t mean Justice.” I stressed that our children needed more than just access to the benefits that STEAM education offered; they also needed the necessary support systems to ensure that access leads to success.

  Later that month, I got to witness the epitome of black success in America at President Barack Obama’s second inauguration. I was part of a group of NASA engineers and astronauts accompanying exhibits of the Curiosity rover and a float of the Tuskegee Airmen. When we got close to the presidential viewing area, I saluted the president. He looked my way and saluted me back. Once again, seeing President Obama take the oath of office filled me with immeasurable pride.

  As part of the inaugural festivities, I spoke to kids at an event sponsored by Jack and Jill, the African American family organization. After that I went to a party with Pharrell and will.i.am to look at using gaming for education, part of NASA and White House efforts to engage nontraditional partners to help advance the STEAM cause.

  The following month will.i.am invited me to attend his TRANS4M 2013 at the California Science Center. The focus of the event centered on wellness and STEAM. Los Angeles magazine described the conference as a place “where geek meets cool.” In addition to presentations from me and science luminaries such as inventor Dean Kamen, the creator of the Segway, the conference showcased youngsters from Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights area, will.i.am’s old neighborhood. Those kids are doing amazing things with science. Many of them were students from Roosevelt High School, depicted as a “Drop Out Factory” in the award-winning documentary Waiting for Superman. Will.i.am said Superman was never going to come to his neighborhood and therefore he needed to put on the cape himself, with help from corporate and local support. I began the day’s proceedings while standing under the space shuttle Endeavour, and former president Bill Clinton delivered the much-anticipated keynote. While stressing the importance of the arts and sciences, he suggested that youngsters growing up in tough neighborhoods could also be especially equipped to succeed.

  “A lot of them are unusually alert to their surroundings at a very young age,” Clinton said. “The observational powers they need to survive on the streets are the same they need to apply in class.” Will.i.am closed the conference by reiterating the goals for TRANS4M: “Kids are the architects of the future. We need to give them the tools to design their tomorrow to be different than their predetermined future.” Afterward, Alicia Keys and the Black Eyed Peas jammed at the Hollywood Hotel late into the night.

  The rare opportunity to party with the stars and other luminaries brought levity to the workday grind of managing budgets and navigating office politics. Even all that pales in comparison to the byzantine workings of Capitol Hill. In June, I had to testify before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. I had a dual role, speaking as both a senior NASA official and a cochair of a White House committee called the Federal Coordination in STEM Education Task Force. Budget hearings typically pit different government agencies and special interests against each other, jockeying to control programs and spend taxpayers’ money. Sitting next to my cochair Joan Ferreni Mundi, who was also the education director at the National Science Foundation, I had my prepared remarks describing our plan to best utilize the $2 billion in the federal budget earmarked for STEM education programs.

  I told the committee, “For the United States to maintain its preeminent position in the world it will be essential that the nation continues to lead in STEM, but evidence indicates that current educational pathways are not leading to a sufficiently large and well-trained STEM workforce to achieve this goal. Nor is the U.S. education system cultivating a culture of STEM necessary for a STEM-literate public. Thus it is essential that the United States enhance U.S. students’ engagement in STEM disciplines and inspire and equip many more students to excel in STEM.” I went on to outline our framework for increased collaboration among agencies and how to strengthen partnerships with other agencies to provide a coherent and cohesive network of STEM education efforts at the federal, state, and local levels.

  After my testimony, the committee began questioning me about my involvement in NASA budget cuts to seventy-seven of its educational programs. Donna Edwards, a Democratic congresswoman from Maryland, asked me point-blank if I had cut my programs. I hesitated before finally responding no, which prompted the congresswoman to ask the question again. There was a reason for the pause. Before the hearings, my boss and NASA’s deputy administrator had urged me to tell the committee that I had cut the programs. I told her I couldn’t do that because it wasn’t true. She chewed me out after the hearing. Fortunately, the president’s science adviser sent me a letter of appreciation for doing a great job on the Hill. I felt vindicated.

  Two weeks later I attended an astronaut reunion in Houston that enabled me to reflect fully on the rich history of black members of the Corps and my place as a grateful beneficiary of their legacy. I met with Cheryl McNair, widow of Ron McNair, who had died on the shuttle Challenger. Legend has it that when he was finishing his PhD in laser physics at MIT, someone stole the briefcase that contained his almost-completed dissertation. Back then it was all done on typewriter without the backup files we rely on today, so he had to reconstitute everything from memory to graduate. A brilliant black thinker, he grew up in South Carolina, where someone called the police when young Ron tried to check out a science book from the segregated library in his town. Once the police officer arrived, he saw Ron’s determination to learn and was so moved that he checked out the book for Ron.

  A role model to me even though I never met him, Ron had convinced Charlie Bolden to apply to the Corps, who in turn told me that you can’t get in unless you apply. Theirs was a legacy of encouragement passed down to each successive generation of black astronauts, a tradition that I worked to extend by helping a new generation of black students pursue STEAM educations.

  Ron had been the second black American citizen to fly in space. The first, Guion Bluford, was also at the reunion. Understated and approachable despite his formidable role in history, he was always quick-witted and sharp as a tack. In addition to spending time with pioneers like Guion, I enjoyed the added bonus of catching up with my Penguin classmates.

  My fellow a
stronauts formed a valuable kind of family, strengthened by relationships built over time and sustained by shared experience. That summer I attended another reunion, a gathering of the family that I was so blessed to be born into. My mother’s side of the family, the Colemans, gathered in Halifax, Virginia, in July. My grandparents had a tobacco farm and my mom had always told me that the work was hard. They had cows, pigs, chickens, and the usual farm animals that made life manageable without much outside intervention. Uncle Chandler still runs the farm today primarily by giving horse rides, and makes his living as an auctioneer. I had never heard someone speak as fast as he did when soliciting bids on items for sale.

  Listening to my aunts and cousins recalling great stories from days gone by, I traveled in my mind back to my own childhood experiences at our family farm in Halifax, Virginia. One summer I decided to venture through the tall grass in my plaid shorts and Buster Brown shoes. Earlier in childhood I once wore braces because my legs were bowed—a trait I inherited from my dad. However, I had outgrown the need for metal support and was just happy to walk through the fields on my own. I was unaware though of what was in the tall grass as I returned home covered from ankle to knee in chiggers. The little mites had burrowed under my skin, and I soon started scratching. I couldn’t stop. My grandmother coated my legs with calamine lotion, but that only gave me temporary relief. She then proceeded to paint my legs with white shoe polish. She said the polish would harden and suffocate the bugs. I was a sight to be seen, walking around the yard with little white legs sharply contrasting with my brown skin. My sister, Cathy, and my cousin Karen could not stop laughing and picking at me, but I didn’t care because Grandma’s home remedy was indeed easing my anguish.