(KRT) Although Fernanda Zabala describes the day of the Columbia space shuttle crash as a somber one, she never considered missing her classes at Florida’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
“Actually, I don’t recall anyone not attending classes” in the days following the crash said Zabala, a senior engineering physics and aerospace engineering major. Only one of her professors even mentioned the crash, warning the class that a minor engineering mistake can cause a disaster like Columbia.
“You’re risking your life no matter what,” said Zabala, whose lifelong dream is to be an astronaut and travel to Mars. “Things like this happen…. I’m not going to stop what I want to do.”
She said Embry-Riddle-the world’s oldest and largest aviation and aerospace university-has prepared its students for the dangers of space travel.
“I believe I speak for the entire department [by saying] that we are absolutely educated,” she said. “We really, really want to do this.”
Other students at Embry-Riddle echoed Zabala’s commitment to the space program after Columbia’s failure.
David Mackler, a first-year graduate student pursuing a space science degree, described space travel as a noble cause.
“Unfortunately, you have to make sacrifices to get things that are worthwhile in the world,” he said. “You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”
Mackler said he still believes space travel is well worth the risks and that he would have gone on the Columbia mission even if he knew he would die.
“It would have been the happiest 17 days of my life,” he said.
Embry-Riddle students were not unique in their enthusiasm. Students in aerospace and aviation departments nationwide described their devotion to the space program.
John Ferren, a senior aerospace engineering major at St. Louis University’s Parks College of Engineering and Aviation, said he was shocked by the result of the latest space mission.
“It’s kind of an eye-opener,” he said. “I could be one of those people.”
Instead of feeling discouraged, however, Ferren said he has become more aware of the importance of his studies and gotten more involved in academics.
“It makes you want to get a little more out of what you’re doing,” he said.
Describing the benefits of space travel, Ferren said, “the research that can be done up there is tremendous.”
Patricia Reiff, director of the Rice Space Institute at Houston’s Rice University, said her students “are still amazingly interested, some of them even more so” since the Columbia disaster.
After the crash, Reiff took a poll of her sophomore and graduate students, asking them, “If you were qualified, would you still go into space?”
The majority-62 percent of sophomores and 75 percent of graduate students-answered “yes.”
For Zabala of Embry-Riddle, space holds more promise than home.
“I don’t really feel like I belong on Earth,” she said. “Space is the future… there’s very little left to discover on Earth.”