Saturday, June 28, 2008

Barbara Morgan returns to Classroom

She waited twenty years for her ride, watched from the ground as back-up for Christa McAuliffe when Challenger exploded nine miles into its doomed mission in 1986, and now Barbara Morgan is retiring from NASA and is headed back to the classroom.
It is unlikely any of her present-day students will remember the explosion of the second Space Shuttle. Instead of appreciating how close Barbara Morgan came to becoming a flaming footnote to the history of NASA or how long she waited for her flight into space, it will be interesting if they will even think its a cool thing to have a "for real astronaut" as their science teacher.