First Native American to space walk shares experiences

When astronaut John Herrington became the 143rd person in the history of the human race to complete a spacewalk, he also became the first person of Native American descent to do so.

A traditional feather he took to the International Space Station representing "Mother Earth, Father Sky and all the people in the world" is now displayed in the Smithsonian.

But while his heritage remains an important part of his identity and while he continues to work on behalf of the Native American community, much of his lecture Tuesday night at Southeast Missouri State Univeristy's River Campus focused on just how cool it was to bounce around the cosmos on the International Space Station in 2002.

"I used to sit in a cardboard box and dream I was going to the moon," he said, pointing to a photo of himself at age 4, standing in sunglasses in his family's Oklahoma yard. "It's nice to have that dream, but who in your life is there to help you achieve that?"

His course, he explained, was a long one with more than a few false starts. His father, a pilot, gave him his first flying lessons at age 10, but when eventually urged to pursue higher education, Herrington proved too restless for study.

Astronaut John Herrington recounts his experiences in space during a lecture Tuesday at Crisp Museum on the River Campus in Cape Girardeau.TYLER GRAEF

"I learned how to rock-climb as a freshman," he said. "I did that instead of study and when you don't study you don't pass exams."

Not passing exams earned him a 1.72 GPA and three Ds, he explained.

"But no Fs," he said.

He dropped out to work in a restaurant until he landed a gig rock-climbing, this time for an engineering team trying to survey a canyon for construction of a highway.

"I was learning trigonometry for the first time in my life hanging off a rock," he said, and his boss eventually convinced him to go back to school, where a professor then convinced him to join the Navy.

"And they cut all my hair off," he said.

He became a naval aviator and then earned a spot as a test pilot, the ranks of which are a favored pool for NASA's astronaut-pickers. He applied for the space program and before long was preparing for a trip to space.

"It takes eight-and-a-half minutes to get to orbit," he said. "The first two are kinda bumpy."

Then the last few minutes, "it feels like someone's sitting on your chest," he said. But then you see the International Space Station, "floating out there in the vastness of space."

Space walking, he said, is the ultimate experience for a rock climber.

"There's nothing between me and whatever else is out there in the universe," he said. "That was an, 'Oh, gee,' moment."

And, he said, there's no upside-down in space, which takes some getting used to.

"First, I was climbing up the belly of the space station, then I was on top crawling across the top of it," he said. "Your mind will flip you and the first time it's kind of weird."

He then shared several videos of he and his fellow astronauts either performing physics experiments or plain goofing off with food in zero gravity, putting Swedish Fish in globular water droplets.

"Only 588 people have been fortunate enough to fly in space," he said. "Part of my job is to come back and share what it's like."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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