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AEROSPACE ADVENTURE (article on SAHS Aerospace Summer Camp for 8th graders)
By PAULETTE PERHACH paulette.perhach@staugustine.com On the first day of camp, Director Gail Cullum took a casual poll of the students, asking who was there because they wanted to be there, and who was there because their parents made them. "Pretty much they were all there because their parents thought it was a good idea," she said. So Cullum, who gets as giddy as a school girl when talking about the periodic table or propellants, had one week to convince the rising eighth grade boys and girls, mostly from Sebastian and Murray Middle Schools, that math and science could be cool and fun during the Aerospace Summer Camp. Cullum's love of aerospace engineering, plus a Master's degree in materials engineering, brought her
to St. Augustine High School last year to teach at the new Aerospace Academy. She was happily retired from a career building jet engines for companies such as Pratt & Whitney when she heard the academy needed teachers. She's now an adjunct professor with Embry-Riddle, teaching dual enrollment classes at the high school that help students from SAHS earn college credit in the academy. "In a perfect world, it will result in students going into aerospace who wouldn't have even considered it, who wouldn't have even known what it was," she said. The camp, which was free to students thanks to a grant, would hopefully serve as a funnel to introduce students to the academy, all in an effort to eventually get more students into the field. "We're really trying
to revolutionize the high schools My main focus is impressing on the students, who think engineering is to too difficult, that they can do it. . Or students that think it's boring. Gosh, what could be more exciting that aerospace?" she said. Wrestling their ears away from iPods and their eyes away from handheld games like the PSP, Cullum set out to make science fun. What better way than to build a rocket. The students built their very own Estes Alpha rockets, experimenting with the wing placement and outer decorations. Then they go to do what would get them suspended on a normal day: fire a rocket at school. The rocket-toting youngsters walked out to greet the launch pad, with two fire extinguishers waiting on the ground. "In our house, this is a normal Saturday activity," said Cullum. That's why she brought her son, Ryan, a rising ninth grader who's planning on enrolling in the AICE program and the Aerospace Academy, to help out. He can attest for her love of the field. "She loves it. It's her life. As far as I can remember, she's been doing aerospace," he said. "It's interesting. I have two engineers as parents. There's a lot of engineering talk at home." For instance, the formula to find the height of a rocket. Height = Baseline x
Tangent of Angular Distance. Using a altitude measuring device made from a protractor, a straw and some string, the students line up as Ryan handles the launch. "5,4,3,2,1" The rocket shoots into the sky with a firecracker's scream. Whoas come from a crowd up upturned heads. A few duds get booed, and the real crowd pleasers are the ones where the parachute catches on fire or malfunctions, and instead of floating to the ground, the rocket shell shoots back toward earth. Cullum then took the students back in to figure out what went wrong with the duds. "I think we learn much more when we make mistakes then when we're right," said Cullum. "I want them not be afraid to build rockets, not to be afraid to experiment with rockets." Field trip day. Seeing the 15-seat table, the boys cheered "Yesss!" And ran for seats. They sat grinning and rocking at the long conference room table, their heads not quite reaching the tops of the wing back chairs. This was their day at the 125th Fighter Wing, Florida Air National Guard. They rode to the Jacksonville Airport on a chartered bus, many with earbuds in their ears, while a scratchy version of "Apollo 13" played on small TVs every few seats. They entered a secret back entrance to a corridor when the conference
room waited. There Maj. Richard Bittner awaited, and treated the students to a PowerPoint presentation, complete with videos of flights and pilots set against music such as "Where Eagles Fly" by Sammy Hagar, Creed's "Take Me Higher," and, of course, "Danger Zone." Another video showed pilot wannabes in a g-force simulator. A g is the equivilant of the normal gravity of earth. So, when pilots feel two g's, the feel twice as heavy. In the video, the trainees' faces mushed against their bones, their skin dragged down until it looks like the face of a starving 100-year old. Then they usually pass out, and their heads sag over to the side. If the idea of becoming a pilot still sounded good to the students, they'd have to study and keep physically fit, and they have to go to college, Maj. Bittner told them. Then it was out to the wing. The students got a full body checkout of an F-15, with two pilots as their tour guides. Up in the cockpit, Doug Fike, better known as his call sign, Atalas, waited to answer
questions. He told the students about their practice dog fights, 50 to 100 offshore. In an F-15, you could be to Savannah in 10 minutes. It's nothing to hop the pond, or the Atlantic Ocean as it's known to most people. The students saw the red button that shoots missiles, and the trigger that releases 100 bullets per second. "Have you ever shot anybody?" one student asked. "No," he hadn't. But he shared their perfect record of 104 kills to 0, meaning they'd shot down 104 aircrafts, but had never lost a jet. Walking around the hanger,
Cullum felt at home. "I could stand back there and tell you every piece of that engine," she said. At the Space Center The students had a field trip planned to Kennedy Space Center. Only after they were purchased did NASA schedule a launch. "This is like going to Disney on the Fourth of July," said Cullum, standing outside the space center, where the lines stretched into a plaza. In the Space Center, the students toured the facilities on a bus, stopping off to get a close look at a real Saturn V rocket. They toured just hours before Shuttle Atlantis began its mission to the Space Station. But Cullum hoped they students would see past just being an astronaut to the dozens of other careers available at NASA. As she talked with others about jobs you could have at Kennedy Space Center, student Carson Royal, 13, listened from across the bus aisle. Though he hadn't really considered the area before, he was convinced by the end of camp that he wanted to go into the Aerospace Academy. "The things I've learned are really cool," he said. He liked building
the rockets best. "It was fun and interesting," said Carson. "Yeah, and it was something new, too," said his buddy Tyler McLemore. In the lines, the other students talked about camp. "I don't want it to be over," said Amy King. Though the NASA day was a bit of a bust because of the crowds, it was the conversations on
the way home that were the most exciting to Cullum. "It made me so happy, on the last day the students asked, 'Can we come back next week?'" she said. "It gave me chills."
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