From West Orange to the stars

WEST ORANGE, NJ — Astronaut Scott Kelly, 1982 Mountain High School graduate, is an American hero. Originally from West Orange, he started from humble beginnings.

“If I was in school today, I would have been the kid that was diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. I would spend more time looking out the window or looking at the clock trying to will it to run faster,” he said.

Kelly returned to his alma mater on Oct. 17 to launch his new book, “Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery.”

On the West Orange High School auditorium stage, New York Times reporter John Schwartz spoke with Kelly about how he became an astronaut. Even as a poor student he still went to college because that’s what was expected of him. However, Kelly ended up accidentally attending the wrong college. Not wrong like it was the wrong school for him, wrong because he literally mixed up the colleges. Kelly ended up arriving at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, when he intended to attend the University of Maryland, College Park. However, he remained in Baltimore briefly, keeping up with his poor-student habits.

It was not until Kelly accidentally came across the book “The Right Stuff,” by Tom Wolf, that he realized he needed to get his act together. There was something about the book’s red, white and blue cover — the same colors used for his own book — and the way the title indicated motion in a positive direction that truly drew him to the book. The nonfiction novel was about fighter pilots and test pilots, as well as the original Mercury Gemini and Apollo astronauts.

After reading “The Right Stuff,” Kelly thought he shared similar qualities with the people in the story except for one difference: Kelly didn’t do his homework. Kelly thought if he could just solve that problem and work on studying then maybe he could end up like them. Kelly stated that the book “got me inspired to do something I thought was not possible.”

Eventually, Kelly started on the “hard path.” He taught himself how to study, he changed schools and became an engineering major. After a while, Kelly started doing better and got into the United States Navy; he later ended up becoming a fighter pilot and a test pilot. However, Kelly realized when he first got to flight school in Florida, he was not a very good pilot. But quoting his brother and fellow astronaut Mark Kelly: “How good you are at something is no indication of how good you can become.”

Many of the guys who were considered great pilots in flight school never became astronauts. And while “the space shuttle is challenging to land,” landing an aircraft carrier is “absolutely terrifying,” Scott Kelly said.

Scott Kelly became an F-14 pilot, the same airplane featured in the movie, “Top Gun.” The first time he tried to land the airplane on an aircraft carrier, Kelly had to do it during the day and if he did well, he had to do it again at night. For his first daytime landing attempt, Kelly landed so low that the hook of the airplane hit the back of the ship. Kelly figured they would send him back to the catapult and he could just launch again, but he ended up being taxied aside, the plane was shut down and the engines were shut off. Kelly’s instructor asked, “Are you sure this career is for you?” At first Kelly thought maybe he couldn’t do it and that maybe it wasn’t meant for him. But he did not give up. Kelly felt that if he was going to fail at something he might as well fail at something he didn’t think he was capable of anyway. After working hard, Kelly got better and ended up being able to land the plane during the day and at night.

Following his experience in the Navy, Kelly ended up piloting the space shuttle for his first flight on a Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. On his second flight, Kelly became commander of Space Shuttle Endeavor headed to the International Space Station in order to repair some broken equipment as well as bring new hardware up. After his second flight, Kelly went up again and spent 151 days on the ISS.

On his most recent mission, Kelly spent almost a year on the ISS. The reason for his latest mission was to learn more about spending extended periods of time in space for potential trips to Mars. Someday, human beings are going to travel to Mars and it is going to take 200 days to get there, 200 days to get back and they will have to spend a year on the surface. Before that can happen, there is more that needs to be understood about space and its harsh environment.

A zero-gravity environment can cause the loss of bone mass; if exercises or prevention methods aren’t taken, after 100 months in space, the human body would be a puddle of skin and organs.

One of the difficult parts about leaving for space is the nerves leading up to the launch. Kelly said that “leading up to a space launch, you think about the fact that this could kill you. Eventually you come to terms with the idea and you’re sort of committed.”

Kelly mentioned that he was always more focused on doing his job. Even in space, Kelly would never get bored because there is just too much work and always something to do. Kelly stated that, with all of the work to be done and the zero-gravity environment, space is a challenging place to live.

“It feels magical, risky; the view is incredible; floating is fun. Floating makes everything just about harder to do except moving things that are really heavy and getting into awkward funny positions, but the work is rewarding,” he said.

Kelly hopes his story will motivate a person like him to do things they believe they cannot do.

Author Anna Favetta is the editor of The Pioneer, the West Orange High School newspaper. She is also a member of the Mountaineer Media Team. To read The Pioneer online, visit wohspioneer.org.

  Scott Kelly, West Orange High School