Space-age Teacher

Space-age Teacher

Tina Anderson always wanted to be an astronaut, but while the 44-year-old grandmother from Rigby, Idaho, (pop. 2,998) has given up her dream of flying in the shuttle, she’s become a pioneer in space education.

Anderson regularly voyages to classrooms throughout Idaho with her Mobile Space Station trailer, where students grapple with a 10-foot robotic arm and don mock space suits. In her fifth-grade classroom in the nearby town of Ririe, students gape at a model astronaut-training simulator and a mock command center. Autographed pictures of NASA astronauts adorn the walls. When a real simulator used to train Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts became available for free from NASA’s Moffett Field in California, Anderson helped form a space committee in Ririe to haul the multi-ton simulator back to town in 1996.

“When they told me I could have it, I just about died,” says Anderson, who has attended space camps and teacher education programs at NASA facilities in Alabama, California, Colorado, and Texas. “Their only stipulation was that we had to take the simulator apart and get it home ourselves.”

With additional help from the Idaho Space Consortium—which funds efforts to increase awareness for space projects—Anderson solicited 10 semi-truck drivers to haul the parts back to Ririe. She persuaded nine volunteers to dismantle the 60-foot structure over a period of 10 days.

“We just started unscrewing bolts with wrenches,” Anderson says. “Later, I learned how to use a forklift and cranes.”

Three years after moving the $4 million simulator to Ririe for storage, Anderson met three astronauts who trained on it for moon landings—Eugene Cernan, Joe Engle, and Edgar Mitchell. “They told me that was the roughest ride they’d ever taken, even rougher than their actual liftoff,” Anderson says.

Meeting astronauts is nothing new for the space-age teacher.

On Jan. 3, 1997, Anderson arranged for her class to talk with the Russian and American commanders on the Mir Space Station. She is also a friend of NASA astronaut Tom Jones, who has flown four shuttle missions and worked on the Space Station. Five years ago, Jones started answering letters from Anderson’s students, and in 1999 the teacher arranged for him to meet her class. Jones was impressed by Anderson’s missionary zeal to spread the word about space.

“When I was visiting, not only did I do space station activities with her school, but I spoke in an old theater downtown, because she wanted to make sure the community had a chance to participate, too,” Jones says.

He reviewed Anderson’s proposal to acquire the simulator and helped her design the hands-on shuttle stations for her mobile space trailer, which she and her husband created. The 28-foot long trailer earned her an award from the Idaho State Board of Education.

In 2000, with the help of Idaho congressman Mike Crapo, Anderson moved the simulator to Arco, Idaho, (pop. 1,026) where her dreams of creating a museum and space camp stand a better chance.

“Arco is already working on a museum and this could be its centerpiece,” says Anderson, a member of the Idaho Science Center Board, which is trying to create the museum. “It’s also right by the Craters of the Moon National Monument where the Apollo astronauts trained.”

Although she is still looking for bricks-and-mortar funding, Anderson has already gotten verbal commitments from the Smithsonian and NASA to send traveling exhibits.

“She is helping to lay the groundwork for more public support of future space endeavors,” Jones says. “There is still a next chapter to be written in space exploration. But we aren’t going to be able to take those steps in the next century unless we have many Tinas out there. She is really indispensable.”

Karen Karvonen is a frequent contributor to American Profile.

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