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Born in Costa Rica, Franklin Chang, the NASA’s first Latino astronaut, shares his thoughts on The Washington Post By
Rachel Hatzipanagos
While the American memory of the Space Race is most often filtered through black-and-white photos of white men on the moon, NASA’s reality was Technicolor. People of color, including the black female mathematicians who worked as “human computers” and were depicted in the Oscar-winning “Hidden Figures,” were a part of NASA’s space program from its inception. This Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and this is a good time to highlight another figure, Franklin Chang-Díaz, who is NASA’s first Latino astronaut. Chang-Díaz, now 69, flew his first space mission in 1986. He would go on to fly in six additional missions in his 25-year career with NASA, which ended with his induction into the agency’s Hall of Fame. While Chang-Díaz was born and spent much of his childhood in his native Costa Rica, his aspirations started with the American Dream: He immigrated to the United States in 1969 with $50 in his pocket. This transcript of our interview with Chang-Díaz has been edited for length and clarity. Do you remember the first time that you wanted to go to space? Yes, I remember that very vividly. It was 1957 [at age 7], and it was triggered by Sputnik. The Sputnik was something that lit up the imaginations of many, many children, not just in the United States but all over the world. And I was one of those latter children. I was growing up in Costa Rica, and all of a sudden space became a place people could really go to. The idea of going to space, which had been something in the science fiction books, all of a sudden became real, and flesh-and-bone astronauts had been selected in 1959 by NASA. Those were the pioneers that we all looked up to. Did you ever pretend to be an astronaut? Absolutely. In 1957, I built a spaceship, which was a cardboard box from an old refrigerator or some other packaging. And inside that box, I put a couple of chairs and we were sort of laying on our backs. And I would get in there with my cousins and friends and we would go through a countdown to liftoff. We would lift off into space and land on some distant planet and explore and then come back to Earth. In 1986, I was on my first flight on the space shuttle and I was sitting there thinking to myself, “I've done this before,” and it was a recollection of those early-childhood memories of being inside that box with my friend and those chairs pretending to go to space. You are of Chinese and Costa Rican descent. How do you think that helped shape your identity? I think of myself as a mixture of many cultures. I don’t think of myself as, you know, half this or a quarter this or anything like that. I’ve lived in the United States now most of my life, so I feel very much American, even though my Costa Rican roots are still strong and most of my family is still in Costa Rica. My children were all born in the United States and their families are all-American families. So it’s just a typical immigrant situation, where you end up getting absorbed and melting into the society. The United States is a multicultural society, which in itself forms its own unique culture. So that’s kind of the way I see myself. And I don’t think of myself as a citizen of a country anymore. Actually, I think of myself as a citizen of the world, of the planet, and many astronauts will tell you that. They come back realizing that they really are citizens of the planet and not citizens of a country. What was the process like to become selected as an astronaut? In March or April of 1980, I was called for an interview and then a week of evaluation and testing at Johnson Space Center. When that happened, I knew that I had at least made the initial cut. There had been over 3,000 applicants that had pursued that job, and they had selected 120 and I was in that group. I went to Houston and went through the testing evaluation and all of the medical tests here for a week and went back to back to Boston to work. A couple months later in May, I got the call from NASA that I had been selected, and it was the happiest moment of my life. Of course, my life changed entirely from that moment on. So at that moment, I became the first U.S. naturalized citizen to become an astronaut and the first Latino astronaut. It completely changed my life; it was a wonderful moment. I thought I was going to fly maybe once or twice, and I ended up flying seven times, more than anybody else. I just am extremely grateful to this nation that opened the doors for me. This is definitely, in my mind, the land of opportunity because for me it was exactly that. It worked out exactly the way it was advertised. So here I am, trying to give back a little bit to this country and help on the next phase. Was space as you imagined it would be? Yeah, it was as I imagined. But the tones and the brilliance were much more vivid. For some reason, the eyeballs are able to take in a lot more detail than I guess you could capture in film. It was about the sharpest possible picture that you could ever imagine. And if you stared at something long enough, you could even see features that you couldn’t see right at the beginning. You can see things like ships, for example, or contrails from airplanes. You could see bridges and you could see a lot of things that you wouldn’t see right away because your mind integrates information and then gradually gives you more detail because you know what’s there. It’s an amazing sight. What was your most memorable experience in space? I did three spacewalks, but my first spacewalk was very memorable, because you’re walking out of the spacecraft into the open, a wide open space. The only thing separating you from the vacuum of space is just the thickness of the visor of your helmet or the thickness of the space suit. It is extremely impactful. I spent quite a bit of time on the end of the arm, so people would move me around from inside the space station. At the end of the arm, there were times when I could not see anything except my feet standing on something. We went into the dark nighttime, and the Earth kind of disappeared. All I could see around me were stars, nothing but stars. And it just got a little spooky, a little strange to think that maybe everybody left me out there. Interesting thoughts come to your head in those kinds of moments. It makes you think about what humans are going to feel like going to Mars when the Earth will be a point of light and Mars will be a point of light and there will be stars everywhere, nothing to have reference to. It would be very, very difficult, you know, psychologically speaking, a very tough moment for humans to be there for that. Complete Dr Chang-Díaz interview can be reached at Washington Post site here* Rachel Hatzipanagos is a multiplatform editor at The Washington Post. Her latest articles can be reached here* ---------------- Have you heard about Dr. Chang-Díaz's space missions? We would like to know your thoughts on this story. Send your comments to: news@amcostarica.com |
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