Under astronaut Dr. Bernard Harris' watchful eye, 6th graders Enya Garcia and Ben Vo demonstrate actual Space Shuttle seats in the reclined position they would assume for the flight's first eight and a half minutes to enter orbit.
Astronaut Dr. Bernard Harris, 52, the first African-American to walk in outer-space, hosted a pep-talk to a crowd of receptive students at the Madison Middle School auditorium Feb.27.
This is Harris' first stop on a 10-city " Dream Tour," sponsored by Exxon. His own "Harris Foundation, Inc." talk dovetails with this tour. His foundation sponsors a summer camp.
Its thrust is to instill into young students the gravity of learning mathematics, science, technology, and engineering when focusing on career goals. Those skills will open doors to 80-90 percent of all jobs in the future, he said.
According to the Dream Tour Web site, "In 1990, (Dr. Harris) was selected as a NASA astronaut and flew his first mission three years later. A payload commander of STS-63, the first flight of the joint Russian-American space program, Harris accomplished his childhood dream by completing a walk in space, becoming the “First African American to walk in Space."
At the time of his retirement from NASA in 1996, he had logged more than 438 hours in space and traveled over 7.2 million miles.
"Everybody asks how do you do math in outer-space, or have I seen any aliens in outer-space. I'm not going to answer those questions," said the native Texan who has a quiet and sturdy, Morgan Freeman-like charm. "But I am going to answer 'What is it like to be in outer-space.'
"My dad had issues with drug use. My mom was college-educated, and made the decision to divorce and leave Texas. I know some of you come from a family with one parent. It doesn't matter how you begin in life. It's how you deal with adversity. You need to take that adversity and turn it into something positive , but I know it's tough."
His mother and he landed on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico where she worked. He attended boarding school there.
"What influenced me the most was what happened when the sun went down at night...when I was 8 years old. When the lights began to appear in the heavens, I asked myself what it would be like to travel to the planets and stars. When I was 13, in 1969, and saw Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the moon on TV, I was hooked. They were American heroes, and I wanted to be an American hero."
