Dunbar's Doring explores 'Teachers in Space'
Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, August 17, 2011
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Dunbar teacher Susan Doring rode in a glider with former shuttle commander Rick Searfoss, a retired Air Force colonel.
For Susan Doring, this summer’s trip to California was way better than visiting Disneyland. She flew in a glider out in the desert and learned to pilot a flight simulator for the Lynx suborbital spacecraft under development by XCOR Aerospace.
“We actually had zero gravity, then a stall, and you had to pull out of the stall,” recalled Doring, who teaches engineering, architecture, robotics and foundations at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
She and two dozen colleagues from around the country spent a fruitful week at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center. The Suborbital Astronautics Workshop was part of the Teachers in Space program, whose professional-development sessions give science, technology, engineering and math teachers an exciting look into the emerging world of commercial human spaceflight.
“It was just a dream come true, and if it can come true for me, then it can come true for any of my students,” said Doring, a graduate of Purdue University, the “cradle of astronauts.”
“I’ve been interested (in the U.S. space program) ever since Christa McAuliffe was named to ride aboard the Challenger,” she added.
The New Hampshire social studies teacher and the crew died when that shuttle crashed during the January 1986 launch.
As NASA closes out the shuttle program and U.S. companies develop the next level of space travel, the goal of Teachers in Space is to eventually fly 200 teachers a year in suborbital reusable launch vehicles. This revolution in low-cost access should also enable thousands of Americans to fly in space and create jobs for the next generation. Some of those future pilots could be among today’s high school students.
“It’s not a matter of ‘will they be one of the select few?’ but ‘how many times do we want to go?’” Doring said of space travelers.
Following McAuliffe’s lead are the Pathfinders – the first group of teachers preparing to make a trip into space and then return to their classrooms. Doring met three of them at her workshop, along with former shuttle commander Rick Searfoss, a retired Air Force colonel.
Naturally, Doring wants to get in line, too. She plans to apply for a space camp for teachers in Huntsville, Ala., which could help prepare hopefuls. “I’ll just turn it in and see what happens,” she said.
In the meantime, she is sharing the California experience with her students at Dunbar. She brought home a computerized simulator that uses a joystick and rudders to demonstrate various types of flight. Then there are potential mini-lessons on aircraft forces, aviation weather, rocket propulsion and spaceflight dynamics.
Doring also plans to show the McAuliffe documentary “Reach for the Stars” and have her students build their own aircraft, perhaps from balsa wood.
She was grateful for the chance to network with STEM colleagues and pick up fresh ideas for the classroom, saying, “It gives you a whole new energy and a whole new ‘my kids can do anything’ mentality.”
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