WASHINGTON, DC – What do an astronaut, a college football coach and a world peace organization founder have in common? They’re all Free Spirits.
Astronaut Eileen Collins, Pennsylvania State head football coach Joe Paterno and ‘Playing for Peace’ founder Sean Tuohy were all recipients of the 2005 Free Spirit of the Year award presented by the Freedom Forum.
Collins was the Free Spirit of the year and Paterno and Tuohy were honorees. One hundred two high school students, myself included, were also recipients of the award, receiving a $1000 college scholarship and a trip to Washington, DC.
Collins addressed the student Free Spirits on March 21 at the Watergate Hotel and was asked questions both about her acceptance of the award and about her profession.
Collins holds numerous titles as the ‘first woman.’ She is the first woman to pilot a space shuttle and the first to be assigned as a space shuttle commander. After three trips into space, Collins plans to let the younger astronauts take over, but still plans to work with NASA.
Sixteen more shuttle flights are predicted to take flight between now and 2010. After the shuttle flights, NASA hopes to visit the Hubble Space Craft, return to the moon and explore the universes and other earth-like planets with a faster way of travel. “I believe there is a way to go there [outside the solar system], we just don’t know it yet,” Collins said.
“You are being hurled into space is the only way I can describe it,” Collins described the shuttle launch. She continued to say that at 100 miles per hour, it sounds “like you’re in a room on fire.”
Collins described her physical strength after landings as being weak and needing help to get up and walk. A loss of calcium in space, even with treadmills for exercise in the shuttle, gives many astronauts physical trouble when they return to earth.
She illustrated some games the astronauts play with tennis balls or golf balls to pass some of the down time. One game was described as going up and down the shuttle without hitting the walls – a tough task with no gravity.
Collins said she likes to look out the window at the earth, but, she can not give any truth to the rumor that one can see the Great Wall of China from space. She also does not deny it because she has never looked for it.
Back when Collins was in high school, she said she would probably have been voted least likely to become an astronaut due to her shyness. But, she became interested in space in the 4th grade and was reading books about pilots and space at the age of 9.
Her interest, determination and great ability allowed her to be the first woman to do so many things in the space program and also made her a Free Spirit.