NASA astronaut awes students at Campbell Elementary

By Denise Dick | May 12, 2012 at 12:07a.m.

Campbell

Astronaut Michael J. Foreman applied to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration eight times before he was accepted.

“If you fail at something that many times, it starts to hurt a little bit,” the retired U.S. Navy captain told Campbell Elementary School students Friday.

But the eighth time proved the charm. He was accepted and completed five space walks during two shuttle missions to the International Space Station. That made all of his attempts worth it.

“Once I was in space, I forgot all about those rejections,” Foreman, a Wadsworth, Ohio, native, told the students.

Foreman visited Campbell as well as St. Charles Elementary School in Boardman as part of Ohio Northeast Health System Inc.’s 25th anniversary. He also toured Youngstown Community Health Center and was to be the featured speaker at a Friday night formal dinner at Tippecanoe Country Club.

First-grader Aidan Woodward, 7, and third-grader Ahmari Weaver, 9, said they think being an astronaut sounds like a pretty neat career.

Aidan learned how fast a space ship goes: 17,500 mph.

“That’s eight times faster than a bullet,” Foreman said. “It’s five miles per second. See this patch I have here? It says Mach 25. That means I’ve traveled 25 times the speed of sound so it’s pretty fast.”

Ahmari saw in a video that Foreman showed students that water floats. She thought the coolest part of Foreman’s presentation was learning “how they get to fly” and float outside the shuttle.

Aidan learned that she shares something in common with people in space. “I didn’t know they had M&Ms,” she said.

Foreman talked about the candy when a student asked him about his favorite food.

“It’s probably M&Ms,” he said. “But I shouldn’t really say that. We have a lot of good food. We have smoked turkey and mashed potatoes, corn and beans, broccoli au gratin — I’m sure that would be a big hit around here.”

Contrary to popular thinking, they don’t have astronaut ice cream, he said.

Another student asked him what space looks like.

“It looks really neat,” Foreman said. “You can look back at the Earth and it’s neat to see Earth from that far away.”

You cannot see the boundaries that separate countries from that distance, he added.

He urged students to find something that they enjoy and make it a career. He probably wouldn’t be as happy, he said, if he’d become a doctor like his mother had wanted.

He enjoys his work.

“It feels like you’re contributing to our space program when you help to build the space station,” said Foreman, who received a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master of science in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.