Shuttle disaster doesn't deter women on team

By THERESA HOGUE

Gazette-Times reporter

When Marci Whittaker heard her cell phone ringing early in the morning Feb. 1, she hit "Ignore" and rolled over in bed. But the phone calls kept coming. Finally, after hitting the "Ignore" button another dozen times, she finally answered the phone. A voice on the other end said, "You need to turn on the television."

That's when the aspiring astronaut and Oregon State University nuclear engineering student realized that the world had changed a little. The Space Shuttle Columbia had been destroyed, and no one was quite sure what went wrong. Whittaker reacted first by crying, then calling all her friends.

"I was really sad. I didn't know immediately what had happened," she said. "I didn't know if it was just the shuttle or the space station too. And I know Donald Pettit, who is on the space station. We visited him and his family when we were in Houston. We used to hang out in his shop. It was really cool. I was very concerned about him."

Whittaker and two of her OSU Microgravity team members, Angela Ernst and Rachel Wittrock, gathered Wednesday to discuss the Columbia disaster, their participation on the flight team, and their role as women engineering students in a male-dominated field.

As a freshman, Whittaker participated in OSU's first Microgravity Flight Team. She was inspired by the words of Pettit, an OSU graduate who spoke to her chemical engineering class about space travel and NASA's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program, which provides college students the chance to build and use scientific devices in a zero-gravity environment.

Whittaker joined a group of other engineering students to comprise OSU's first Micrograv-ity Flight Team and successfully applied to NASA to participate in the program in 2000. She continued with the group in 2001 and had her first chance to be part of the OSU Flight Crew that went up in the "Vomit Comet," a KC-135A plane that can dive several thousand feet in a matter of seconds, creating short periods of weightlessness. Not every team member has the opportunity to actually experience the plane dive.

This is Whittaker's senior year, and her fourth chance to participate in the zero-gravity program. While she's not sure she'll have a second chance to go up in the Vomit Comet, she is sure, just as some of her team members are, that her dreams of becoming an astronaut are as strong as ever.

So are Rachel Wittrock's. The mechanical engineering junior, like most of her team members, was too young to remember the explosion of the Challenger in 1986, but she said the Columbia disaster, while shocking, hasn't quelled her dreams of space flight. Even her parents haven't suggested she turn her mind elsewhere.

"They're probably worried, but they haven't said anything," she said.

Wittrock, Whittaker and Ernst are used to being among only a handful of female engineering students and know that when they start careers, either with NASA or elsewhere, they'll face the same small numbers. For now, they can turn to each other for support, but their work on the team isn't about making it as women in a male-dominated field, it's about operating as a team and trying to make a scientific difference.

The 12-member team is redesigning last year's project, a device that forces air into water, creating bubbles that under G-forces expand in size. The applications are endless, Whittaker says, as the data they'll gather in zero gravity will help them learn at what speed bubbles merge. This could eventually help scientists remove air bubbles from reactors, space station pipes and even human veins.

The team members will fly to Houston in August for their chance on the Vomit Comet. For now, they're designing and building a better bubble device and fund-raising for their travel expenses. For some team members, it might be just another zero-gravity step toward space flight.

A statement posted on OSU's Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program Web site reads "Our hearts

and prayers are with the families of the STS-107 crew and the entire NASA community. We will uphold the deep scientific curiosities of these amazing people and continue to educate and inspire the next generation."

With a lot of hard work, some OSU students could one day follow their curiosity into space as well.

ON THE NET: OSU's Microgravity Flight Team; www.engr.oregonstate.edu/groups/microgravity

Theresa Hogue is the higher education reporter for the Gazette-Times. She can be reached by

e-mail at theresa.hogue@lee.net or by phone at 758-9526.