2017 K-12 STEM Symposium

I'm usually good when it comes to finding astronauts who are keynote speakers. However, I owe a tip of the hat to my friend, who found an event I had somehow missed: the 2017 K-12 STEM Symposium which featured (among other speakers) Larry DeLucas, payload specialist on STS-50/Columbia, the first US Microgravity Laboratory flight.

Grabshot of Larry DeLucas.

An astronaut? At a Saturday event, with no work worries (aside from getting only three hours of sleep?) And it's free? With tables to peruse? Poyekhali!—Let's go!

My friend and I were walking the hallways checking out the exhibits when I spotted whom I *thought* was Larry DeLucas walking by. (To be fair, I saw he was also wearing the pin of his new company, The Aerospace Corporation, which resembled the Avengers logo!) We caught up with him, he needed help checking in; I walked with him to the front of the school and got him settled.

The event was held at the Nysmith School for the Gifted in Herndon, Va., just down the road from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Udvar-Hazy museum and nearby a new housing complex whose streets bore names like Neil Armstrong, Earhart, Sally Ride and Endeavour.

About 3,000 people showed up,enough to utilize overflow parking at an office complex across the street. I don't think too many people knew those offices included Sierra Nevada, makers of the Dream Chaser spaceplane under development!

Ben said he felt great being 311 years old.

 Later we again ran into DeLucas  and had two nice chats with him. My friend talked about his macular degeneration (DeLucas is an optometrist and flew with a detached retina!), and I talked with him about his spaceflight and preparation.

Wish I had one of those photographic memories, because DeLucas gave some great insights - he and Al Sacco, his backup who later flew on the second US Microgravity Laboratory flight - are great friends but were really competitive, understandably, for one of the two payload specialist spots on STS-50. Sacco would ask a question, then DeLucas would follow up with a question of his own so as to not to appear less smart!

STS-73 Mission and Payload Specialists. Al Sacco is second from left.

What I did not know was that Roger Crouch was also vying for STS-73/Columbia, Sacco's flight. (DeLucas said he opted not to fly again, owing to the rigors of training and being away from family.) DeLucas successfully made the case that Sacco, as a backup, knew the experiments better. (Crouch had been the backup for STS-42/Discovery, the first International Microgravity Lab, and later flew on STS-83/Columbia, the first Microgravity Science Lab. However, due to a problem with Columbia, the shuttle was brought back early. An unprecedented decision was made to refly the experiments and the crew en masse, so Crouch wound up with a second flight, STS-94, also flown on Columbia.)
 

Roger Crouch, Discover Engineering Family Day

DeLucas also knew Bob Phillips, who was a prime payload specialist for Spacelab 4, which was postponed first due to the many delays in launching the shuttle in the mid-'80s, then by the Challenger accident.

The flight later morphed to Spacelab Life Sciences-1, flown as STS-40/Columbia in 1991. By that time, Phillips was medically disqualified as well as to old to fly when it finally launched. (We had been talking about the right age, quote unquote, to flying people in space, particularly researchers.) DeLucas didn't know Phillips had died just four years ago.

He happily signed for us - I was trying to find a vacant room so as not to draw a crowd but settled for the back of the auditorium. We were one of the only ones to get an autograph because talks ran late, DeLucas was the penultimate speaker, and afterward had to catch a cab back to the airport (He had arrived that day, and had been away from his house six of the seven days the past week!)

Because of the condition of the book, I no longer scan the relevant photos from my copy of "Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years." But DeLucas was the No, 200 (out of 355) Shuttle astronaut to sign, No. 213 overall in the book, and the No. 170 astronaut I've met.

For those of you keeping track at home, you may recall a previous post where I gave the number of astronauts met as No. 168. Who then was No. 169? Not Christina Koch, whom I just heard but didn't interact.

No. 169 was Dan Barry, whom I met in September 2016 at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.

As part of the Game Changers series of talks, Barry talked about the future of space exploration. He flew on three Shuttle missions - STS-72/Endeavour, STS-96/Discovery and STS-105, also a Discovery mission - and about 100 people showed up for a great presentation.