Emily Calandrelli gave a delighted laugh when she saw the look on the little girl’s face after the Alka-Seltzer rocket shot upward.
Calandrelli, an internationally known advocate of all things outer space, was back in her hometown of Morgantown a few summers back for a book-signing.
The WVU-trained aerospace engineer and science show TV host is also an author of a popular series of children’s books aimed at getting youngsters excited about all things related to STEM: science, technology, engineering and math.
She was here for a book-signing on that warm July afternoon.
With Calandrelli involved, that meant a few on-the-fly experiments to help punctuate the experience.
That’s where those bicarbonate-fueled bottle rockets vectored in.
“Whoa,” the kid said, with moon-sized eyes.
“I know,” came Calandrelli’s reply.
“How cool is that?”
Sometime in the near future, Calandrelli will be the one saying “Whoa,” when she slips the surly bonds to regard the Earth from interstellar climes.
Calandrelli is hitching a ride on Blue Origin, the private space flight company founded by billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos. The launch date has yet to be announced.
Bezos has been a passenger on his company’s suborbital flights – as has aviation pioneer Wally Funk, “Star Trek” actor William Shatner and Laura Shepard Churchley, the daughter of Alan Shepard, America’s first astronaut in space.
The craft in which Calandrelli will be a passenger is named the “New Shepard,” in honor of the astronaut, who blasted off May 5, 1961, for a 15-minute jaunt in low orbit.
Her flight, in fact, will take the same trajectory of the Mercury Freedom 7 capsule that carried Shepard that day 63 years ago.
“I can’t think about it without getting emotional,” she said Wednesday.
“Just being able to regard the curvature of the Earth from space. You don’t get a lot of time up there with these suborbital swipes. I’m not going to miss a second.”
Countdown
Back home in Morgantown, she didn’t miss very many seconds, either.
The Suncrest kid staged backyard carnivals to raise money for muscular dystrophy research nationally and at WVU.
Sales from her summertime lemonade stand went to WVU’s Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center.
She went into hyperdrive at the university in Morgantown, where she majored in aerospace engineering, studied abroad in Turkey and experienced zero gravity on NASA’s ruefully named “Vomit Comet” airplane – so christened for the air sickness the craft’s parabola-jumps have been known to induce.
Two graduate degrees followed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, launching a resume that eventually resulted in her gig in front of the Netflix cameras as the host of the popular “Emily’s Wonder Lab,” on the streaming network.
Flying (with the flying WV)
In the years since, she’s traveled the world in the cause of her show on the streaming network.
Calandrelli’s even been to Star City.
No, the other one.
The one in Russia, where the cosmonauts train for their missions beyond Earth’s orbit. Meanwhile, she’s now happy to carry West Virginia’s space-resume back to the Cosmos.
It’s a resume and roster that now includes test pilot pioneer Chuck Yaeger, who cut the stratospheric swath that made space flight possible; and NASA “human computer” Katherine Johnson, who factored launch and re-entry trajectories for the Apollo 11 moon flight.
Calandrelli will be the first woman from West Virginia to journey into space.
She’s grateful for the courage of the home state denizens who went before her, she said. That, and their tenacity and brain power.
Her very flight will even a carry another Mountain State pedigree as part of its payload.
Said flight is made possible with the help of the Wing 2 Wing, a philanthropic organization in West Virginia founded by husband and wife Brad and Alys Smith.
Brad Smith serves as president of Marshall University.
“I appreciate the association with Marshall,” Calandrelli said.
Of course, she’d like a launch with her alma mater, she’s quick to add.
“I’d like that flag with the flying WV logo in outer space.”
