'We're our better selves in space,' astronaut who grew up in Fort Collins says

Space exploration isn’t just about experiencing zero gravity or flying so high that you can view the entire Earth through a portal window.

It’s about problem-solving and science, former astronaut Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger said Tuesday. She was recently the featured speaker at a fundraising event in Fort Collins for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics grants given by the four local chapters of Rotary International to local schools.

Astronauts have performed more than 3,000 experiments at the International Space Station in the 25 years it has been in orbit above Earth, involving a wide variety of subject matter, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration . That work has led to improvements in vaccines, cancer treatments, brain surgery, agriculture, computer and digital technology, battery life and function, and many other areas, Metcalf-Lindenburger said.

She spent 15 days on board the International Space Station in 2010.

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Metcalf-Lindenburger is a retired astronaut now, spending her time educating people about the importance of STEM education and space exploration as a featured speaker at events throughout the country, like the one Tuesday, and serving as a substitute teacher in Washington state, where she now lives with her husband and their daughter, who is in high school.

Her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut began in 1983, she said, when she first realized it was possible after Sally Ride became the first female from the United States to go up in space. She was in elementary school in Loveland at the time and the child of parents who had both studied STEM subjects in college. Her mom, Joyce Metcalf, was a math major, and her father, Keith Metcalf an engineering major, she said, with a shop in the garage where Dottie and her younger sister sometimes helped him design and build things.

When her family later moved to Fort Collins, her interest in science was piqued by a project at Boltz Junior High, where students turned food waste into ethanol to power a lawnmower. In 1990, Dottie was able to attend a NASA space camp at its flight center in Huntsville, Alabama.

“It was awesome!” she said. “We launched rockets, we pretended like we were astronauts, you pretended like you were part of Mission Control. And, we learned about the Hubble space telescope, because in April of 1990, the vehicle 'Discovery' was taking Hubble into space for the first time.”

When Dottie returned home, she built a model of the space shuttle Discovery to hang in her bedroom as “that physical reminder that this is what I want to do and now I know what I need to do, which is I need to continue pushing myself in math and science in high school and then on to college.”

She accepted a position in the Peace Corps to teach English in Kazakhstan for two years after graduation from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, figuring she’s come back to the U.S. afterward “for graduate school, do a master’s in geology, a Ph.D. and then go work at the (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory” in southern California.

Unrest in Kazakhstan in 1997 caused the Peace Corps to pull out of that country before she got there, she said, and she wound up back in Fort Collins briefly, volunteering as a cross-country coach at Fort Collins High School.

That led her to go back to school to earn a teaching license, which she did, at Central Washington University, and a job teaching high school science in Vancouver, Washington. She taught Earth science for three years, she said, but “I still had space on my mind.”

So, she created a new class in astronomy.

And a question from a student in that class, coupled with her own natural curiosity, led her back to NASA. The student, she said, asked how astronauts go to the bathroom in space. In looking up the answer online, she wound up on the NASA website and learned that they were hiring teachers to join their 2004 class of astronauts.

Dottie applied, was invited for an interview — snapping a picture of space-shuttle toilet while there to bring back for her students to see — and ultimately selected.

“So, curiosity not only fueled my dream, but it also helped me find my dream job,” she said, proudly displaying the picture of her checking out the toilet in a slideshow that was part of her presentation.

Training was rigorous, she said. Outdoor wilderness training in Maine. Water survival training in Pensacola, Florida, where astronaut candidates had to practice underwater escapes during simulated helicopter crashes. And flight training. First on small two-engine propeller planes and then T-38 Talon supersonic training jets, with cockpits similar to those on the space shuttle “Discovery” that eventually took her to space six years later, from April 5-20, 2010.

Dottie was one of five Mission Specialists on a seven-person crew that delivered science racks to the International Space Station, according to a NASA mission summary , and joined an international crew of six who were already at the space station. With three women on her flight and one already on the space station, their mission marked the first time four female astronauts had been in space together at the same time.

Her primary job on the space station, she said, was to move equipment and work closely with the two astronauts assigned to go out in space, tethered to the station, to perform maintenance, upgrades and repairs. She and the other backup “spacewalker,” pilot James Dutton, helped the two men, Clayton Anderson and Rick Mastracchio, get into their spacesuits and into the airlock each day, then operated the airlock hatch as they exited and returned each day. She never actually got to walk in space herself, she said.

Dottie and Dutton would then talk to the astronauts and monitor them for 6-8 hours at a time while they were out in space performing their work. They worked through solutions when things didn’t go as planned, sometimes bringing in a team back on Earth to help troubleshoot.

Those multiple layers of proficiency and teamwork, she said, “help us do great stuff in space. So, it’s not just one person at all; it’s really a huge team.”

And that team, she hopes, might some day include one of the 33 middle school students who were in the audience Tuesday. Someone growing up in Fort Collins, fascinated with science and space the way she was. People who not only want to explore our universe, but also to work with those from other countries to solve our most critical problems.

During question-and-answer session after her presentation, Dottie was asked about continued cooperation with Russia on space projects, in light of the growing tensions on Earth between the two countries. Her response suggests those who have seen the Earth from afar, through a port window in outer space, don’t necessarily view the world the same as the rest of us.

“I think space makes us better people,” Dottie said. “We as individuals that care about our cosmonaut friends and our other friends that are from Europe and Japan and all these different countries. We want to work together. We need each other when we’re in space to stay alive.

“So, I just think we’re our better selves in space, and I wish we could do that here on Earth.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com , x.com/KellyLyell and facebook.com/KellyLyell.news .

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: 'We're our better selves in space,' astronaut who grew up in Fort Collins says