Teacher Astronauts
By Christopher MooreNASA scrubbed its “Teachers in Space” program after the tragic Challenger accident that led to the death of Christa McAuliffe. The program was reintroduced nearly a decade later, only to be slowed to a near halt along with the entire shuttle program with the break-up of Columbia over Texas. I was teaching high-school right before the last disaster, and with the backing of administrators at my school, I was preparing an application to become a teacher in space. Although NASA has stated that the program will go on, I doubt we will see teachers floating in NASA space shuttles anytime soon. (They have been floating in planes, though.)
Ahhh, but while they may not be floating around in NASA shuttles, they could find themselves strapped to private rockets such as SpaceShipOne or Rocketplane Kistler. The Space Frontier Foundation’s Teachers in Space program has been announced, though there are very few details.
Cosmic Log has this:
The privately organized Teachers in Space project got off to a good start in April, when Armadillo Aerospace, Rocketplane Kistler and XCOR Aerospace announced their participation.
Eventually, the Space Frontier Foundation would like to see a federally funded $20 million program to put teachers on suborbital spaceships - which would help prime the pump for private enterprise in space travel. For now, however, organizers are happy with every privately donated seat they can get.
“Rides to space are what we’re about,” Bill Boland, project manager for Teachers in Space, said in this week’s news release. “Masten Space System’s generosity means another teacher will have the experience of a lifetime. It’s great to have them onboard.”
I’m not sure why SFF would necessarily need federal funds. It seems like private companies are falling over each other to offer free flights to qualified teachers. Of course they are! It’s business. If a private space flight is only supposed to cost ~$250,000, then that’s a small price to pay for some pretty serious national press. The first few flights are guaranteed to be national news, and every flight thereafter will at least make local news in the teachers home area.
My only hope is that they will consider college level teachers as well, so that I may revisit old, nearly forgotten dreams. 
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The Teacher in Space project was not scrubbed with the Challenger accident — it continued as an educational outreach program well into the 1990s, working with the semifinalist and finalist teachers from the original competition.
Comment by rmc — Monday -- August 6th, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Sure. But how many teachers actually went into space until Barbara Morgan took a ride on the shuttle earlier this month?
For nearly 20 years, the teachers in space part of “Teachers in Space” WAS scrubbed. In fact, the one teacher who has gone to space (a few weeks ago) has taught exactly zero lessons from space. Her shuttle commander was quoted as follows: “I don’t have a teacher as a crewmember. I have a crewmember who used to be a teacher.”
That’s a significant shift from the programs original design.
Comment by Chris Moore — Wednesday -- August 15th, 2007 @ 8:47 am