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Reach for the stars, live your dreams

By B.L. Azure

Two Eagle River students gravitated to NASA astronaut John Herrington Tuesday for a photo op with the American Indian astronaut. (B.L. Azure photo)

PABLO — Navy Commander John Herrington, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and the only enrolled tribal member to ever fly in space as a NASA astronaut, has been feeling pretty down to Earth lately. The soon-to-be 50-year-old retired NASA engineer and astronaut is currently on a national bike tour that will take him from the state of Washington to Florida.

The 4,000-mile pedal-pushing ride began at Cape Flattery, WA in mid-August. Herrington will put his kickstand down at Cape Canaveral, Florida at journey’s end. Rocketrek, as the sojourn is called, is designed to encourage student participation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The ride is expected to take three months to complete the journey that will take through Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Along the route, stops are planned in each state and Herrington will discuss his journey to the space program, the wonders of flying in space and the need for students to realize their potential that lies within.

On Tuesday, Herrington was on the Flathead Indian Reservation and he made several stops along U.S. Highway 93. Among them was the Two Eagle River School in Pablo where Herrington addressed nearly 100 students, staff and faculty in the gymnasium.

Herrington’s hour long “Living Your Dreams” presentation said that America is a country focused on sports and entertainment. Consequently so are a lot of young people’s dreams of their future. However, very few - a minute number of people - ever realize those grandiose futures.

More down to earth dreams of futures can be realized though with guidance, role models and hard work.

Herrington said that when he was growing up people encouraged him, believed in him and armed him with the idea that he could do anything he set his mind to. The key is the mind and the education of it. The fuel is hard work.

Herrington’s education came by the hard way. His father, a pilot, moved often and he attended schools throughout the America. “I had moved 14 times by the time I was out of high school,” he said. “One time I was in a school for a week before we moved again.”

Despite his vagabond education Herrington graduated from high school in 1976 and entered college. However, he was more interested in extra-curricular activities than the much more important curricular education. He left college after posting a 1.7 grade point average his freshman year.

“I was 19 years old and thought I knew what I was going to do when I grew up,” Herrington said. “I was more interested in rock climbing than school.”

While wondering what he might do with his adult future he was advised to go back to college. And the second time around was the ticket to his future as an astronaut. He joined the U.S. Navy when he was a senior at the University of Colorado.

“I went from a long hair to no hair,” he said. In the Navy he became a test pilot and traveled throughout the world.”

However, the sky was the limit when in the cockpit of a jet plane. Herrington had his eyes set on the outer limits and applied to become an astronaut.

Herrington was selected by NASA as an astronaut in April 1996. In August of ‘96 he reported to the Johnson Space Center in Houston where he successfully completed two years of training and evaluation that led to his astronaut qualification for a flight assignment as a mission specialist.

In 2002 Herrington logged more than 330 hours in space aboard the Endeavour space shuttle and the International Space Station. He conducted nearly 20 hours of work outside the space station. Following that he worked in ground support of the ISS in training efforts for the U.S. and Russia.

“In the International Space Station everyone has something to do. We are all assigned different jobs,” he said. He showed a 30-minute movie clip of his mission in outer space 220 miles above the earth where it is 200-degrees above zero in the daytime sun and 200-degrees below zero in sunless nights.

While cruising around the earth at 1,750 miles per hour he had to don 500 pounds of equipment that, among other things, included his space suit with its self-contained breathing apparatus. In the weightless vacuum of space, he said a person could move 2,000 pounds with their fingers. During the 13-day mission Herrington and the others traveled 5.6 million miles.

“The most satisfying work I ever done was while I was in that space suit,” he said, adding that people will probably always be in outer space. “There have been people flying around in space constantly for the past eight years. In that time we could have gone to Mars and back twice.” (It takes about 18 months to reach Mars when it is in its nearest orbit to Earth.)

Herrington said that it is hard to get a good eight hours of sleep in space for various reasons including weightlessness and hallucinations. “I saw fireworks when I closed my eyes,” he said. It was very distracting. In order to keep muscle tone and density each astronaut does at least two hours of resistance exercise a day.

“I always dreamed of going to space,” he said. “Everyone here can do this kind of thing. You can overcome any challenges with hard work.”

Herrington told the Two Eagle students to look beyond the mundane and boring when charting their futures. “Look forward to doing something that motivates you. Don’t do something that you don’t like. Have fun in what you do,” he said. “When high school ends, what are you going to do? Hang out? Work? Go to college? Hanging out gets old fast. When you get a college education people can’t take that away from you.”

He said that he has met some very good people in his Navy and NASA career. He earned about $138,000 a year as a Navy Commander and as a NASA astronaut. “I didn’t make any more money in space than I did on a ship,” he said, adding that being an astronaut is dangerous work. “When you lift off you have 500,000 pounds of explosive fuels at your back. But you can’t worry about the dangers; if you do you can’t do the job. If I worried about getting hit by a semi while riding my bike I couldn’t do what I am doing today.”

While in space he could see large cities like Houston, Paris and London with the naked eye. He could not however see the Great Wall of China. “I could see an oasis in Libya (in Saharan Africa),” he said. “It was a patch of green with roads coming to it from all directions.”

Commander Herrington retired from the Navy in October 2005 and left NASA to pursue a career in the commercial space industry. He currently serves on space and science advisory boards including the American Indian Institute for Innovation of which he is chairman. The non-profit AIII is based in Rapid City, SD and is dedicated to improving the opportunities for Native American students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

“I am now doing educational things. In South Dakota I am working with others to build a school in Rapid City,” Herrington said, adding that he may rejoin NASA. He left in part because of the bone mass loss he experienced in space prohibited him from being able to go on more missions. However the bone mass loss threshold has been revised and he is now under it making him eligible to go back. That’s all up in the air right now, he said. His current mission of pedaling 4,000 miles on terra firma and spreading words of encouragement to adolescents is mission numero uno for the Chickasaw tribal member who escaped the bounds of Earth by fueling his dreams with the sweat of hard work.

Herrington was born Sept. 14, 1958 in Wetumka, Okla., and as a youth he spent time in Colorado, Wyoming and Texas. He graduated from Plano Senior High School, Plano, Texas, in 1976.

Following high school he attended the University of Colorado where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Mathematics in 1983. Herrington earned a Master of Science degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in 1995.

He has two children. He enjoys flying, rock climbing, snow skiing, running, and cycling.