Space veteran encourages Kaua'i students to aim high
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau
KAPA'A, Kaua'i — Kids fascinated by space, by aliens and by astronauts didn't know quite what to make of the real thing when faced with a live astronaut yesterday.
Jan TenBruggencate • The Honolulu Advertiser
Frank Culbertson, who spent a third of last year (129 days) in space, came down to Earth to talk to the kids who may follow him into the profession.
Frank Culbertson spent 129 days in space.
As he stood in blue overalls covered with official patches, he found some of the kids had difficulty making eye contact. He quickly set about making them comfortable.
"I decided at 13, when I was in the eighth grade, to be an astronaut," he said. "Being an astronaut was the best way to go as far and as fast and as high as possible."
Culbertson, 53, who talked from space via ham radio with students at Kaua'i's Island School during his flight last year, is spending three days on Kaua'i talking to school groups. Yesterday, he talked with two dozen students at the Kaua'i Children's Discovery Museum.
He was the lone American with two Russian cosmonauts on the international space station Alpha.
The former test pilot loosened up the crowd with jokes and asides.
To kids whom he'd earlier seen fashioning alien beings out of clay and plastic straws, Culbertson joked about his time on the space station.
"We didn't have many visitors up there," he said.
At a talk today at Kapa'a Middle School, his image and voice are scheduled to be transmitted simultaneously to schools on Kaua'i, O'ahu and American Samoa.
The Children's Discovery Museum at the Kaua'i Village shopping complex in Kapa'a has developed educational relationships with NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center and other space-oriented organizations.
