• NEWS >> ATW Dare to Dream: Becoming an Astronaut (Evergreen, 2004) Curriculum Materials

Yearly Script Program Index

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OPEN/WELCOME

Hi and welcome to a special edition of Assignment: The World. I’m Elissa Orlando.

We’d like you to meet Pamela Melroy and through her the past, present and future of the exploration of space. The word “astronaut” comes from Greek words that mean “space sailor”. Out of more than 290-million Americans, only 100 can currently claim to be astronauts. It’s a job Pam Melroy knew she wanted from a very early age.

1—Past PkgFeature No. 1
MELROY

(so) I was about 11 when I decided I was going to be an astronaut and it was the second thing you learned about me after my name. Hello my name is Pam and I’m going to be an astronaut
and I told everyone I met that’s what I was going to do.

Melroy Parents: and of course we figured there would be 77 other careers come along in the teenage years and but she kept a focus on it she’s an inveterate reader and noticed she was reading a fair amount of science fiction but then when she went into HS she started concentrating on math and science

Studio:
(Melroy) there weren’t a whole lot of role models in aviation or science at the time but my parents told me always that I could do whatever I wanted to do as long as I worked hard and never gave up

Melroy parents:
M: Go for it
D: We kept saying go for it were not exactly sure what were supposed to do or how to help you but we encouraged her the entire way we told her from as long as we can remember that she can do what ever she wants to
M: she was a girl but that was ok
D: we knew she was bright enough that she was going to be good at whatever she decided to do and so I said that’s fine. I guess the only time that there was a question about it she came to me and said she loved the theatre dancing and acting in HS and whatnot she said dad I think I really want to go to NYC and go to theatre school after HS and i said Pam you’re good but you’re not that good and that’s a very tough business to get into i would encourage you to do that as a hobby and stick with you’re original plan that was the closest she ever came to thinking about doing something other than what she was doing

ATW FACT

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA came into being on October First, 1958 or about a year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite..

INTRO Second Pkg

NASA has always been picky about who it sends into space. From a pool of 5-hundred candidates, NASA picked just 7 men for its first group of astronauts. That was in 1959. It wasn’t until 1983 that Sally Ride became the first American woman into space. Before her, young women like Pam Melroy didn’t have any role models to inspire them. Melroy and others made their dream come true by focusing on school and improving a wide variety of skills. It’s a combination she says is still valuable to succeeding generations of astronauts.

#2—second package

(Pam Melroy)
…theres so many oppurtunities out there one of the interesting things about astronauts when kids ask me how do i become an astronaut i tell them you have to be something else first we dont hire astronauts out of collge theres no such things as astronaut university theres no place like that people from all different background only about a third of us are pilots two-thirds are scientist and engineers we have biologist we have chemist we have doctors geologists and astronomers and engineers and we even have a veternairan so anything to do with math or science or engineering you can become an astronaut but you have to be good what what ever you do first in that area

Melroy Parents:
M: First of all she of course was a pilot after she went into the airforce she was a DC-10 pilot and she flew big refueling tanker and she flew in panama and then she flew in dessert storm refueling fighters over baghdad with no lights and no radio then after that she came back and became a test pilot C-17
M: it was very good practice if you want to call it that Dave and I have a tremendous amount of Faith and shes doing what she loves to do and thats working its not safe and we know that its dangerous in many cases but your child is doing what she loves and what more can you ask for
Studio interview: the first time that I went up to the launch pad and actually got 6 inches away from a space shuttle and was looking at this vehicle that had been up and down up and down it blew me away it was just so extraordinary but the first time that you actually go to space the nerve racking part is that you want to make sure you do it right and you don’t make any mistakes your team is depending on you the nation is depending on you to safely bring that vehicle up and back


(Pam Melroy)
its kind of funny as you’re driving out to the launch pad dressed in your orange pressure suits everyone else is driving away as fast as they can and you start to get the feeling maybe you’ve gotten your self into something here but its so exciting and then to take the walk down the gantry towards the white room that so many famous astronauts have trod upon before you and you really truly get a sense of being a part of history of the space program and the history of our country

and then they strap you in and you’re lying on your back for a couple of hours while they finish all the checks you have some switches to throw there s a little banter among the crew and then finally about 10 minutes before liftoff you close your visor and turn on your oxygen and all you can hear is the sound of your own breathing as you get closer and closer and then the countdown starts in your head you hear all the voices the radio communications all the things that you’ve practiced hundreds of times literally hundreds of times in the simulator but is not fully quite the same all the switches are there but its looking a lot different out the window than it does in the simulator and then finally at t-6 seconds the main engines ignite and there’s an enormous roar and rock as the vehicle actually tilts back its what we call the twang so you can actually feel it rock and then the computers check to make sure the engines are working properly and that at T-0 the solid rockets ignite and millions of pounds of thrust hit the space shuttle like that and you rocket off the pad its more like having a traffic accident then like flying in an airplane.

(Melroy parents)
D: For a few seconds in the first launch i was absolutley to bellow and busrt flame and i thought to myself what in dear god have i let my little girl get into the only thing that i can describe it is like sending your little girl out to play in traffic thats the level of fear i had for about 30 seconds until the thing took off
M: I didnt even hear it i was so focused on just praying that everything would just go and yes i guess that is fear when youthink about it but i cant really say that i was a fraid i was just more prying that everything would go well
D: My case was raw fear )

(Pam Melroy)
Its absolutely the most amazing then I've ever experienced three is really no physical thing I can compare it to because its very exciting and very violent and you're going 100 miles an hour before you clear that top of the tower on my first flight petrified when the countdown got to about 10 seconds left and that thing started there was a little cloud deck about maybe 5000 feet deep if you’ve ever flown through a cloud deck in an airplane its kind of fun to watch them rise and fall behind you well in a space shuttle we were going so fast that we were through that cloud deck it looked like a little leaf blowing in the wind it was gone before you could almost recognize what it was that you saw and you go up up up with an enormous sensation of altitude and speed on my first launch we launched a few minutes after sunset and we went up so high we were actually able to see the sun again and watch it go down again we roll over on our back and fly up the east coast accelerating so I was on the right side of the vehicle with the window seat that’s one of the perks of being a pilot and I was able to see the terminator which is where day turns into night across the earth across the continental united states and I watched the sun set these brilliant orange brown red and yellow and an over all electric blue of the atmosphere its magic its not like anything I could have imagined something so incredible the sights the sounds and the feelings that you have when you do it are truly incredible there are no other words

#2—ATW Fact

On a par with the first flight of the Wright brothers’ plane, Dr. Robert Goddard successfully launched the first liquid fueled rocket. While the Chinese have used rockets for centuries, Goddard’s launch didn’t come until March of 1926.

#4— —Intro third package

Satellites, space travel, computers…it wasn’t all that long ago that those existed purely in science fiction novels. But as technology develops faster and faster, many more once fantastic things will become possible. How can you become a part of that future, one that could include the first trip to another planet? Pam Melroy has some advice. Third Package

(Pam Melroy)
The space program is not about what most things in this world are about which is what happens this year or the rear after that we’re about what happens 20 to 50 years from now were trying to lay the ground work for that so we try to think in those terms and so when i look at the children I see the next generation of astronauts.
Melroy parents: we desperatly need someon to help us prepare to go to mars in 25-30 years were on a recruiting mission here we want you guys to start thinking about that you guys are just about old enough its time to start dreaming and thats really what PAm did she dared to dream to the biggest dream and have the confidence to go for it and do it

M: and i think a big part of that is girls are still not that encouraged to study science and math as a profession this is what the girls have to understand you are very capable of doing what ever a man ca n its just a matter of having the dream the desire to you can do it and the confidence in your self

(Pam Melroy)
The challenge of going to mars cant be overstated It takes 8.5 mins. to get to lower orbit and 2-3 days to get to the moon and it’ll take about 6 months to get to mars were used it being in constant contact with mission control but it takes time for radio waves to get back to earth we could have delays of up to 30 minutes for more or most of the journey so we have to be very self sufficient
if you go to the moon its only a couple days each way and then a few days on the moon but if you’re going for months and months at a time its going to have big impact on our bodies these are the challenges we have ahead of us we hope that the kids of today will prepare themselves and not just to be astronauts heck we need someone to tell us what the legal implications of landing on Mars are so if a kid is gonna grow up to be a lawyer well we could use him.

Mars is very important to us becasue of the exciting discovery that was made by scientist s at the Johnson space center that suggested that there might have been a form of primitive life at one time on mars why this is so important is very clear to anybody who has ever done an experiment even in the classroom you know that when you take data during an experiment you never take just one data point you look at many different data points and then you try to understand how the whole thing works
In many ways the earth is one data point WE have one kind of biology here we have one kind of atmosphere we have one kind of geology so this is what has happened here on our one data point of earth but if we go to mars we can study how the rocks formed on mars how the atmosphere works and hopefully we can study more about how biology and life form on Mars and we can compare the two and learn more about the universe and learn more about earth

(wow )I cant wait to go back again I don’t know any astronaut if able to go tomorrow who wouldn’t if able to go tomorrow and just be back in space wouldn’t just willingly go again the challenge is it takes a lot of time to prepare for each mission its a lot of time and effort its a lot of worry for your family so every astronaut comes to a point where they decide its time to end but if I could live in space forever and still see my family and east pizza occasionally I think id live there forever.

GOOD-BYE

And that’s it for this special edition of Assignment: the World. From all of us here, I’m Elissa Orlando. We’ll see you next week.

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