The task force predicted that about 100 hours of prep work over a two-month period could get them up to speed.Ī bigger challenge, at least from a public relations perspective, was figuring out how to choose among the millions of Americans who might want to sign up. NASA itself considered recruiting beloved “Sesame Street” character Big Bird, before deciding that-at eight feet plus-he’d be hard to squeeze into the shuttle.Īdvocates of the plan downplayed concerns about amateur astronauts putting themselves, or the highly trained pros they accompanied, at serious risk. The ideal candidate for the first trip, the spokesperson added, was probably “someone who can make an eloquent contribution to the literature.” It might, he suggested, be “a broadcast journalist, a newspaper reporter, an artist, a song writer or even a poet.”Īmong those who had already expressed interest, another report noted, were singer/songwriter John Denver, millionaire publisher Malcolm Forbes and the ukulele-strumming, entertainment oddity Tiny Tim, best known for his rendition of “ Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” “It’s not unrealistic to think we’ll get 3,000,000 applicants who want to take that ride.” “Everybody wants to go,” a NASA spokesperson observed. It soon became obvious that there’d be no shortage of volunteers.

“We need people other than MIT physicists to tell us what it’s like up there,” he said.

Novelist James Michener, a space enthusiast and member of the NASA task force, put it more pointedly. As the group explained, “it is desirable for NASA to fly observers on the shuttle for the purpose of adding to the public’s understanding of space flight.” In the summer of 1983, as Sally Ride circled the planet aboard Challenger as the first female astronaut, a NASA-appointed task force issued a report that called for sending professional communicators, such as writers and educators, on future missions. But it really took off the following decade, as NASA worked to keep taxpayers and Congress excited about crewed space exploration and willing to support the agency’s multi-billion-dollar budget. The dream of sending ordinary Americans into orbit went back to the earliest days of the shuttle program in the 1970s. After that, there was talk of an artist in space. Had it not been for the Challenger catastrophe, the first journalist in space would have followed within the year. The tragedy put the shuttle program on hiatus for almost three years, and it meant the end of an ambitious-some would say starry-eyed-initiative to give people from all walks of life a chance to experience spaceflight firsthand.Ĭhrista McAuliffe, the 37-year-old high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, who was killed in the disaster, was to be the first in what NASA envisioned as a series of civilian “payload specialists.” She had won out over 11,000 other applicants to become the first teacher in space. When the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, seven Americans died on board.

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