posted 10-26-2003 10:11 AM               

NEW YORK-“Me think about becoming an astronaut? It was simply not possible. I was 25 when Sputnik flew, and married with two kids. I knew I always wanted to be a pilot, but how does one become an astronaut?”

Yet, for E. J. “Jake” Garn, former Senator from Utah, he did become an astronaut. In an interview before the New York Metro Latter-Day Saint Professional Association’s 2d annual benefit banquet, held on Friday, Oct. 24, Garn shared his thoughts on his spaceflight and on the US space program.

Garn recalls that his father was the first to hold a pilot’s license in Utah. He also recalled that he and his father were watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon when his father began to cry. “What’s wrong, Dad?” the younger Garn asked. “This should be a happy moment.” The elder Garn was overcome with emotion at watching with Jake man walk on the moon. He remembered his father (Jake’s grandfather) reading to him about the Wright Brother’s first flight. “I wish he could have been around to see me fly into space,” Garn said wistfully.

Garn flew on Discovery/Mission 51D in April 1985 as the first Congressional Observer, a subcategory of the Payload Specialists. Controversy surrounded his flight, as not only was he chair of the appropriations committee that oversaw NASA (and thus charges were that NASA flew him to curry favour with Congress), but there were several Apollo-era astronauts who were still awaiting their first flight. (Don Lind, chosen in 1966, made his first spaceflight on the mission following Garn’s, on Challenger/Mission 51B.)

Garn was originally scheduled to fly aboard Challenger/Mission 51E, which was to have deployed the TDRS-B satellite. Problems with the satellite caused the cancellation of the mission less than a week prior to launch. (See Spaceflight, “Last minute cancellation of shuttle mission,” Sept. 2002.)

Part of the changes caused by the late cancellation of the mission, in addition to a change in orbiters and payloads, was the removal of Patrick Baudry, representing CNES, the French space agency, from the crew, and the addition of Charles Walker, a McDonnell Douglas employee.

Garn says there was no difference in training with the substitution of payload specialists. “Charlie’s EOS [Electrophoresis Operations in Space, a way to process large amounts of pharmaceuticals under weightless conditions] experiments were already installed on Discovery, which is why we lost Baudry as part of the crew.” He did note wryly, “Charlie’s a great guy, but we were disappointed in the switch because we didn’t get to eat French food.”

He dismisses the concerns about his flying on the shuttle. “I had 10,000 hours in military and private civilian aircraft, and thus was able to evaluate the shuttle from the aviator’s point of view.”

Following his flight, Garn returned to the Senate. “As an astronaut training for flight and as chair of the appropriations committee, I was able to see inside of NASA, down to the janitors. They could not hide anything. My testimony before Congress afterwards about NASA and the shuttle was much more direct than my testimony prior to my flight.”

He noted that “John [Glenn, first astronaut to orbit and who later flew on Discovery/STS-95] and I were classmates.” He explained, “In January 1975 we were sworn into the Senate, and since they did so alphabetically, we were standing side by side. My elbow was touching his, and I swore I’d never clean that suit again.”

Ten years later, Garn received a standing ovation from Congress and a big hug from Glenn. Garn thought, “I really have arrived,” when he received the hug.

Glenn later came up to him and congratulated him privately, saying, “You son of a gun! You got 110 orbits to my three.” Garn replied, “Yes, but I would have given up 107 of those orbits to be the first American to orbit the Earth.” Garn would later visit Glenn when Glenn was training for his shuttle flight, and wistfully said, “He completed 147 orbits to my 110. I wanted so much to go back.”

Garn’s opinion about the shuttle, which has not changed with first the loss of Challenger and then Columbia, was that, “We do absolutely need manned spaceflight. Robotics are fine for certain missions, but we need a combination of both.”

Referring to the Columbia accident, Garn noted that, “Not to minimize the loss, but the accident rate is low. NASA tries to make spaceflight as safe as possible, and to minimize risk. There are no draftees in space, we’re all volunteers. We all know the risks. I wrote a letter to my wife and seven children in the event I didn’t come back.

“Politicians say we should not have done this or that. All hindsight is 20/20. No one wants to die, but there will be accidents in the future. We must fly as soon as possible, with not nearly as long a downtime as after Challenger.

“We spend twice as much on food stamps as we do on NASA. And there’s not enough money for science in general, for programs such as the National Science Foundation or the National Institute of Health. Congress likes to vote for programs they can get credit for in the next election, not for something whose results are years down the road.

“People say money is wasted in space. That’s not true – there are no stores in space. All money is spent here on Earth.”

As to the future of the US’ space program, “We are going back to space, and we are going to continue with the science experiments on the International Space Station. Long term, we will go to Mars – that is the next big step. And if we plan on going to Mars, we must return to the moon first.

“For those who question these goals, then there should not have been a Lewis and Clark to explore the western United States, or for that matter, a Columbus to discover the New World.”

And as for Garn’s future, “Absolutely I would like to go back into space. To go once is not sufficient. It’s worse than not going up at all. There’s nothing like it. To experience weightlessness and see the beauty of the Earth from space just once, it makes me want to go back up again.”

**30**