Laura Stiles sat back in her chair with a distance in her eyes and a wide grin. She pulled her coffee cup up to hide it.

She was imagining a meteor shower from her childhood stargazing: her father’s passion and her inspiration.

Stiles, Prairie Village senior, wants to be an astronaut. She wants to walk on the moon and be freed from the gravity of the Earth. She came close last year when she took part in a NASA program.

An engineering student at KU, Stiles said she was afraid that opportunity was waning all across the nation.

According to the aerospace engineering chair, Mark Ewing, nearly half of the students in aerospace engineering have an interest in the space program.

That program has only one professor.

That professor, Craig McLaughlin, has been allowed only one graduate student position to help him with research. McLaughlin was unavailable for comment on this story, but Ewing said McLaughlin has the daunting task of proving economically valuable research. The problem is that no one is asking for student astronauts.

“We could double our student interest and we wouldn’t get a single new professor,” Ewing said. “It is all about the research income.”

The United States, in general, shows a national disinterest in human space exploration. Projects like the International Space Station, Mars Exploration and the Constellation Program, designed to send people to the moon, are being put on the back burner and replaced with robots instead.

Stiles said that the United States had not sent a man back to the moon since 1972 and if they can’t educate kids well enough now, no one will return in the future.

“It will be a long time before robots can do what humans can,” Stiles said.

Ewing said the reason was simple: money. It is much less expensive to put an electronic arm into space than a person. You have to be meticulous in how you design a spacecraft caring precious cargo.

“You can lose a robot and it won’t be a major deal,” Ewing said. “If you lose a crew, it is a national tragedy.”

Ewing said that you have to think about the benefit to the nation. How do you get the most bang for the buck?

Ewing said that programs like GPS and military satellites took precedence.

In the same breath, Ewing apologized. “I am justifying getting rid of the very thing that inspired me.”

Ewing grew up in Florida. At recess he saw the launch of the Gemini and Mercury missions in the distance. He said he doodled space shuttles incessantly and swore that he would fly weightlessly in space someday. He never did.

“Could we learn about the universe through robots?” Ewing asked. “I think so.”

He tipped his head to the side. “You can see I am conflicted,” he said.

“We have PCs because of manned missions,” Ewing said. “It forced us to develop small computers.”

Ewing said he interviewed all of the freshmen admitted to the school. He said the majority of them were there because they wanted to be astronauts.

“It’s something you know by the age of five,” Ewing said. “They are willing to go through the pain and suffering because they want to be in space.”

He said he applied to the space program back when he was in college.

“I got a postcard saying no thanks,” he said.

Ewing said if he had the opportunity to go up now, he would in a heartbeat.

“Do people need to be inspired by the possibility of going into space?” Ewing asked.

“That is a tough decision. That’s a voter decision,” he said, “but I don’t think it will get to the voters.”

Stiles fears that if the national space program is cut it will not only affect space missions, but general interest in science and math fields as well.

Stiles said her father’s generation grew up inspired by the space shuttle era and passed it on to their kids. She said if this generation didn’t get the same opportunities, they would have nothing to pass on.

Stiles said if KU could find a professor who can provide students with real opportunities, he was most likely to go a university that has a strong program already built, like the Air Force Academy and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Recognizing this, Ewing said the department was doing its best to pair with programs like the Air Force Academy’s.

The students at the Air Force Academy design, build and test satellites. They are backed up by strong military funding, Ewing said. KU students can attach their projects to their satellites for their research.

University students aren’t waiting for the department. They are taking matters into their own hands.

The University of Kansas is sending three teams to the highly prestigious NASA Reduced Gravity Student Opportunities Program this summer, much like the one Stiles attended last year. That is the most number of teams that have been accepted by NASA from KU and the largest school attendance this year.

While at NASA this summer, students will take projects they designed into a zero-gravity created environment for testing. Ryan Shaffer, Omaha, Neb. senior in aerospace engineering, said the program was a way that the students can involve themselves in zero-gravity experiments. Shaffer said that you didn’t even have to be an engineering student to do it. The program is based on the merit of the experiment proposals submitted by the student teams.

Stiles said that the department did well teaching the basics and promoting involvement in NASA and Air Force Academy activities, but they were just vacations. They didn’t have the technology available for everyday learning.

— Edited by Jared Duncan