Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993                   TAG: 9307030080
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SALEM                                LENGTH: Medium

LOOKING FOR AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD ATTRACTION? TRY THE SPACE CHAIR

"I ate pizza for lunch."

"That's OK. It won't show up on your shirt."

It wasn't my bright pink shirt I was worried about. Angie Swinford, a counselor at the U.S. Space Camp, was about to strap me into some contraption and send me spinning through, well, who knows where.

The shoulder straps were the kind used by drag racers, she assured me. You mean, those knuckleheads who drive 200 miles per hour?

It was too late. I was in.

Meanwhile, Swinford's partner and co-counselor, John D. Parsons Jr., was explaining to an audience of young children and parents at the Salem Fair and Exposition that the chair I was in replicates the kind used for training astronauts.

It was sort of like being at the dentist. I didn't exactly want to hear the gory details.

He spoke about movement along the "X" axis, movement along the "Y" axis, and weird gravitational forces. I heard him say at one point, "Roll, pitch and yaw."

But I had complete confidence. After all, the space camp is run in cooperation with NASA and the U.S. Army.

Besides, I wasn't really going to be leaving terra firma.

The contraption, as I later learned, is called the Five Degrees of Freedom Training Simulator with Task Board.

The chair is suspended on a frame that floats on air bearings - like an air hockey puck - an inch off the floor. And rather than spinning wildly, I was flipped around a couple of times and asked to attach fake fuel lines from one prong to another.

The chair demonstrates the difficulty astronauts have moving and performing tasks in space. It's part of an exhibition from the Alabama-based U.S. Space Camp, a nonprofit camp and museum for kids and adults.

"We can teach them to fly the shuttle in two hours," Swinford said. Students at the camp can also learn how to fly a jet fighter and build and launch a small rocket.

This is the first year the 10-year-old Space Camp has toured fairs, like the one in Salem. The aim, Parsons said, is to "get kids away from guns and drugs" and get them intrigued by the science and technology behind the U.S. space program.

It seems to be working. Attendance at the camp has skyrocketed from 700 students its first year to about 26,000 last year.

"It's a doozy," fair director Carey Harveycutter said of the space camp exhibit. "It's a much larger [exhibit] than we've ever had here before."

The space exhibition will undoubtedly tickle the imagination of Southwest Virginia's youngsters, as Parsons and Swinford talk about heat-resistant tiles that protect the shuttle's re-entry into the atmosphere, centrifugal forces, Velcro suits, inner ear fluids and such.

And, just how do astronauts go to the bathroom in space?

Anyhow, check it out. It's a blast.