ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 3, 1997 TAG: 9704030044
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA.
SOURCE: KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
Her ambition and drive have taken her past the top of her class at officer candidate school and even past Top Gun.
Susan Still came to Central Florida in 1979 to be a hotshot pilot and go to college with her boyfriend.
But flying, working and taking classes in Daytona Beach weren't satisfying enough. Still said she ``just started realizing that I was cutting myself short and limiting myself.''
She wanted to go higher - into space. She gets her chance Friday at 2 p.m.
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Still, 35, will pilot the space shuttle Columbia on its 16-day mission to study how zero gravity changes flames, metals and crystals. It's the same shuttle she saw launch as a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. She wouldd watch the countdown on television and then run outside her apartment during liftoffs.
Condensing four years of study into three years made the time at Embry-Riddle hectic. Add to that a full-time job as manager of the AMC Daytona Six movie theater, ``and that pretty much filled up all my spare time,'' Still said.
And her boyfriend? He left college before graduating.
Still, who got her private pilot license when she was 16, has spent her career doing things few women have done before. She is only the second woman to pilot a shuttle. A shuttle pilot is more like an airline co-pilot, assisting the commander, who does most of the piloting.
``She's the type of person I'd want flying me in a space shuttle,'' Embry-Riddle professor Chuck Eastlake said. ``I'm not at all surprised that she is where she is.''
After graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical engineering, Still worked on wind tunnels for Lockheed Corp. in Marietta, Ga., not far from her hometown of Martinez. While there, Dick Scobee, who later died as commander of the shuttle Challenger, told her if she wanted to be an astronaut she should join the military.
The young pilot finished first in her class at officer candidate school in Pensacola, Fla. After that, Still finished first in her class at jet school, became a flight instructor, a Navy Top Gun pilot and mastered the difficult F-14 jet, said Still's father, Joe Still, a Georgia plastic surgeon.
Small and thin, Susan Still had to have confidence to survive in the swaggering macho world of Top Gun piloting.
``I was sort of amused at the mental image of quiet little skinny Susan hanging around the stereotype image of fighter jocks,'' Eastlake said.
Still said she and other female astronauts ``have been in typically male roles for a long time now. We've managed to stay women in this majority-of-men environment.''
At NASA, Still thrived even more. She is the first to fly from a group of 19 astronauts NASA hired in December 1994.
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. ``She's the type of person I'd wantby CNBflying me in a space shuttle,'' Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
professor Chuck Eastlake said of Susan Still, who will pilot
Columbia's 16-day mission starting Friday.