Starship 2040 offers peek into the future

Cape Girardeau isn't outer space, but it is on NASA's educational flight path serving as home to Missouri's only NASA Educator Resource Center.

The center, housed in a small, former bank building at 222 N. Pacific St., opened in November 1999 and began operating fully in mid-January 2000. Managed by Southeast Missouri State University, it distributes NASA educational materials including video tapes and space slides to kindergarten through 12th grade teachers in Missouri.

But it's been largely invisible to the general public. Dr. Ernest Kern, a geosciences professor at Southeast Missouri State University and director of the resource center, hopes a new traveling exhibit from NASA will launch greater public awareness of the center and its mission.

NASA's Starship 2040 exhibit will be displayed outside the center Sept. 12-14. Housed in a 48-foot-long tractor-trailer, the exhibit from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., features a full-size mock-up of a commercial spacecraft as it might look in the year 2040.

Visitors can walk through a mock-up of the spacecraft's control, passenger and engineering compartments, and talk with NASA experts.

An accompanying exhibit will feature a scale model of the solar system with the planets perched on big tripods and positioned along Pacific Street from the center just north of Broadway to Normal Avenue on the university campus.

John Green, a rocket scientist with the Marshall Space Flight Center, will speak on "Building the Highway to Space" at 7 p.m. on Sept. 12 in Dempster Hall's Glenn Auditorium. He also will speak at several area schools.

Admission is free to the "starship" and the lecture.

NASA officials say the exhibit isn't just a fanciful display.

"Our ultimate goal is to make commercial space travel as routine and affordable as today's air travel," said Marshall Center Director Art Stephenson.

The innovations suggested aboard the exhibit -- automated vehicle health monitoring systems, high-energy propulsion, navigational aids and emergency and safety systems -- are based on concepts and technologies being studied by NASA, the aerospace industry and academic partners nationwide, including some in Missouri.

In the last year, NASA earmarked more than $36 million in contracts and research funding to Missouri businesses, colleges, and non-profit organizations. NASA doesn't fund the Cape Girardeau center, but it supplies all the center's educational materials, slides and video tapes.

"Our continuing partnership with the Show Me State has helped NASA launch development of America's next-generation space-transportation vehicles and has contributed to numerous other science and research programs," Stephenson said.

"Together, we are propelling the nation into a new era, one in which mankind will journey away from our home world as often and as safely as we travel around it," he said.

Five stops in Missouri

The Cape Girardeau stop is the first of five scheduled stops in Missouri this month. Following Cape Girardeau, the exhibit will move to the St. Louis Science Center.

U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., helped get NASA's newest exhibit to tour Missouri. He said it could excite schoolchildren to take an interest in science.

Kern believes the exhibit also will draw public attention to the center, one of 71 NASA educator centers nationwide.

The center has operated on a $75,000 budget funded by Southeast, Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Southeast Regional Professional Development Center, which helps with teacher training.

Southeast recently obtained a nearly $500,000 federal grant to help fund the center over the next three years and provide additional staffing and equipment.

The center is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays but is looking to expand its hours. Besides Kern, the center employs a coordinator and two student workers.

Local astronaut

The center works closely with the university's Linda M. Godwin Center for Science and Mathematics Education, named for a Cape Girardeau County native and astronaut.

Godwin's ties to the university -- she is a graduate of Southeast -- helped Cape Girardeau secure the NASA center, Kern said. The university's commitment to teacher training also helped, he said.

The Cape Girardeau center promotes math and science by distributing educational materials mostly free of charge. Area teachers can borrow NASA video tapes or slides. The center also sells copies of tapes.

Since the center opened, it has distributed more than 60,000 educational items to teachers and students in Missouri. More than 2,000 people have visited the center.

The Cape Girardeau center's staff has trained more than 650 teachers and made classroom presentations to approximately 2,200 area elementary and secondary students.

Cathy Wissehr is one of the center's regular users. She teaches fifth- and sixth-grade math and science at Altenburg public school in Perry County.

She routinely uses the NASA curriculum and computer programs, and borrows video tapes to show her students.

"My classroom is pretty well wallpapered with posters I have gotten through the NASA center," she said.

"It's your NASA dollars at work," she said. "NASA is not just astronauts. There is an awful lot of emphasis put on education."

Wissehr plans to bring her students to see the starship exhibit.

Altenburg sixth graders Drew Palisch and Kasey Welker are excited about the field trip. "I just like learning about space," said Palisch.

Welker said she might want to be an astronaut. "I like finding out stuff about the planets," she said.

The NASA Educator Resource Center hopes to convince more students to feel the same way.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123