Wednesday, September 14, 2011

My Day 2 Geek Out - Astronaut Brewster Shaw

Speak Out with Your Geek Out week continues in fine style.

Today I attended a lecture/presentation by former Shuttle astronaut Brewster Shaw. An alum of Wisconsin he flew as pilot of STS-9 and commander of STS-65B and STS-28.

Held at Engineering Hall on the UW campus it was packed. I was one of about a dozen of a hundred of attendees older than 25. It was an interesting speech but it was more a commercial for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (he presented a check for $10,000 to engineering student Anthony Sprangers, the first Wisconsin recipient) and then a pitch to work for Boeing (he was VP there after leaving NASA). Later he did speak about what it felt like to launch into space and be an astronaut. He did so to encourage the students to enter the space program. He did so to make them want to go into space. Well, it worked for me, but that's a very easy sell.

My only complaint was that he had no visuals. Come on, man,  you went into space, you were bragging about the photo ops, and yet you don't even bring one? Sigh. Still I am very glad I attended as I got out of work early and it doubled my astronaut count to 2.

That will be hard act to follow tomorrow.

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