ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 4, 1997 TAG: 9704040048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER THE ROANOKE TIMES
Roger Crouch wanted to be an astronaut but was unable to be a pilot because he is color-blind. He went the science route instead.
With today's liftoff of the Space Shuttle Columbia, payload specialist Roger Crouch becomes the first Hokie in space.
Crouch, 56, who will be overseeing microgravity experiments during the 16-day mission, earned his master's degree in physics from Virginia Tech in 1968 and his doctorate in 1971.
Rival University of Virginia still got there first, with Kathryn Thornton - who earned her master's in physics at UVa in 1977 and her doctorate in 1979. She has flown on several shuttle missions, including the 1993 Hubble Space Telescope upgrade. She is now a professor in UVa's engineering and applied sciences school.
But Virginia Tech graduates are leaving their mark on the space program. They are all over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Stuart Lee, now with a biomedical NASA contractor, graduated in 1987 in exercise science and biology and earned a master's degree in exercise physiology in 1992. Blacksburg is his hometown.
His father, J.A.N. Lee, is a computer science professor at Tech. "They've actually got quite a [Tech] contingent down there," the older Lee said.
Stuart Lee ended up at Krug Life Sciences because of another Tech graduate, Alan Moore, who earned his master's degree in 1983 and doctorate in 1987 in exercise physiology. Lee worked with Moore on his thesis, and they ran together several times a week. Moore alerted Lee to an opening at Krug, where he works.
That connection brought another Tech graduate to NASA: Lesley, Lee's wife who earned a master's in health and physical education at Tech in 1995. She accompanied him to the Houston area when he landed his job and is now a mission-support coordinator with human life sciences in the U.S. and Russian NASA-Space Station Mir program.
Stuart Lee recently met Crouch in Houston and introduced himself as a fellow Hokie. "I just ran into him in the hall," Lee said. "He's real excited about his mission."
Chris Edelen, a Martinsville native and a 1989 Tech graduate in aerospace engineering, joined fellow Hokies Eric Hammer, a 1990 aerospace graduate, and Greg Oliver, who graduated in 1980 in aerospace engineering, at NASA's Flight Dynamics Group.
"The three of us," Edelen said, "we basically design the trajectory to achieve the payload objectives of the flight."
This flight will be relatively easy on them, he said, because course changes would cause problems with the planned microgravity experiments. "When we went to get the Hubble, that was a big deal," he said, because the mission required frequent jet firings for course changes.
Although he and Hammer were at Tech at the same time, he said, they "did not know each other. But we're good friends now."
Crouch, a native of Jamestown, Tenn., has been chief scientist for the NASA microgravity space and science applications division since 1985.
He had wanted to be an astronaut, but was unable to become a military pilot because he is color-blind. He went the science route instead, working in microgravity and materials science including being a visiting scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979-80.
Crouch entered a graduate program through NASA's Langley program in cooperation with Virginia Tech. Tech Professor Thomas Gilmer, now retired, helped Crouch find a topic for his doctorate.
Clayton Williams, a physics professor at Tech, remembers Crouch. "He was a very solid, very good graduate student," Williams said. "I'm not at all surprised that he's been successful."
Crouch will be one of a seven-person crew working in Spacelab - a laboratory module loaded onto different shuttles for various missions - on its final trip into space. The experiments on this mission will pave the way for the planned International Space Station, where long-term experiments can be conducted.
The shuttle is not, as popularly believed, outside Earth's field of gravity when it is in space. Actually, it is "falling" around the Earth in its orbit - giving rise to the term "free fall" - so that the effects of gravity are negligible. It is still held in its orbit by gravity.
But the space environment allows experiments in the science of microgravity, a field that didn't exist until the advent of space flight. Such experiments have the potential of curbing air pollution through studying the combustion of gases in free fall. These experiments can also create perfect protein crystals that can be studied on the ground for better understandings of their structure and how they work in the body. Other projects work with creating new kinds of materials.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Crouch. color.by CNB