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Barbara Morgan to Reach Space Station in 2004

Aired April 16, 2002 - 13:53   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, an elementary school teacher who prepared for the ill-fated Challenger mission back in 1986 finally gets her chance, and she is ready and raring to go. NASA today reintroduced Barbara Morgan, who will travel to the International Space Station in 2004.

Joining us now to talk about the Teacher in Space program and the happenings at the station right now, of course, Miles O'Brien.

You were telling me about Barbara a couple years ago.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, well, this has been in work for quite some time. Of course, she was -- Christa McAuliffe's understudy. Trained with her for six months, and of course endured the heart break along with all of us of the Challenger loss in January of 1986.

What is interesting about Barbara Morgan is she never broke stride. She went -- literally -- went out on the speaking tour that was planned for Christa McAuliffe, post-Challenger, and her message was, keep this dream alive. Keep hope alive for a teacher to fly in space, because this is important for children. Sure, there are risks, but we all know the risks. And when she was announced today, or of course, we reported it this past week, but during the press conference today out of Houston, she was asked, of course, about those risks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARBARA MORGAN, ASTRONAUT: To decide to come do something like this, you look at the pros, you look at the cons. You decide, is what you are doing important, and if it is important, it is worth doing, and I can't think of anything more important than our children and their future, and the exploration of the universe. Once you make that decision, you do exactly what all the astronauts do. You go forward with a happy heart, and you don't dwell on risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: That's a woman with a happy heart indeed. Now, the mission is not going to happen any time soon. It is scheduled, as a matter of fact, for 2004, two years from now. She has been in training, however, as an astronaut, a full-fledged astronaut, since 1998. Not many people will remember, except the most serious of space geekdom that on the day that Dan Golden, the previous NASA administrator announced John Glenn's return to space, he also announced that Barbara Morgan, who had resumed her teaching career in Idaho, would come to Houston, and train to be a full-fledged card carrying astronaut.

Now, you may recall back in 1985 when she and Christa were training, the idea was not to have people actually join the astronaut corps, but to participate as civilian astronauts. Go to Houston, train for five or six months, and then fly. Of course, all that was tragically changed on January 28, 1986.

NASA has had a hard time coming back to this idea because of the pain it obviously brings the space agency, and quite frankly, all of us who endured and lived through that moment, but the fact that she has sort of passed over a higher bar of training, much higher bar, been training since 1998, as full-fledged mission specialist, NASA did that in order to make it very clear to anybody watching that she fully understood the risks, and was fully prepared to deal with them. Clearly, she is ready to fly, at 17 years after her -- she was first announced as Christa McAuliffe's understudy. It will be an exciting mission.

PHILLIPS: So, let's go back more than a decade. How was she initially chosen, what is the process? You have an Idaho school teacher here.

O'BRIEN: The civilian in space program is a fascinating tale. The first thing that is interesting is that NASA originally wanted to fly a journalist first. It is very likely that Walter Cronkite would have been that journalist, and were it not for the fact that Ronald Reagan announced at a campaign rally before the National Education Association that he would prefer a teacher to go, it is very likely that Walter Cronkite would have been on the Challenger.

Now, that whole process of bringing in civilians, journalists, and teachers, and writers and poets resulted in a huge flood of applications to NASA. I believe they are on the order of 10,000 applications just for the Teacher in Space program. NASA went through a process which -- I don't know exactly how they did it, because it was overwhelming, quite frankly, but eventually Barbara Morgan and Christa McAuliffe rose to the top after a series of interviews, essays, you name it, they went through the mill, and they became the top two.

PHILLIPS: Wow. You had better get your application in there, pal.

O'BRIEN: It's in.

PHILLIPS: Miles O'Brien, thank you.

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