Symposium events honor past

By Cathy Spaulding
Phoenix Staff Writer

April 18, 2008 01:52 am

— TAHLEQUAH — Wetumka native John Herrington talked about how he could pick up “1,000 pounds of stuff” with his fingertips.
Those fingertips guided an 11-foot robotic space arm attached to the Space Shuttle Endeavour on which Herrington was a flight engineer in 2002.
However, Herrington said the opportunity to use the robotic arm and float around in the expanse of space did not compare to the satisfaction he felt in a job well done.
“You look out at space and you say ‘that’s OK, then you go back to work,” Herrington said Thursday at the Northeastern State University Symposium on the American Indian. “You can go on one flight, 10 flights, 100 flights and not one picture can match the satisfaction of knowing you did what you were supposed to do.”
Herrington, a Chickasaw Nation member, discussed his experience on Endeavour and the need to get students interested in science and math during his keynote address at the symposium. The four-day symposium, which concludes Saturday, focuses on how Native Americans relate to the heavenly bodies through science and art.
The theme was “the Sun, the Moon, the Stars: RHYTHMS OF LIFE.” The symposium features a variety of speakers including poet N. Scott Momaday and United Keetoowah Band author Robert Conley. The symposium also featured traditional Native American competitions such as stickball and cornstalk shoots, plus Native American crafts and art.
Herrington was the flight engineer of the Endeavour’s 14-day mission to dock with the International Space Station in November 2002. The crew spent seven days of station assembly, spacewalks and crew and equipment transfers.
Herrington showed the audience dramatic pictures of himself and other crew members floating in space and working on the station, which he said was the size of a football field.
He said he felt the effects of two weeks without gravity when he returned to Earth.
“I felt like I weighed 1,000 pounds; I never felt so heavy,” he said. “I felt nauseated, I threw up and my heart was beating like you wouldn’t believe. It took a day before I could walk again.”
Herrington recalled wanting to walk off the shuttle unescorted when it landed. He said his daughter would have been standing in front of him and would have seen him.
“I walked off with the flight surgeon hanging onto my arm, and there was my daughter looking at me.
The dizziness and nausea was worth it because of what the Endeavor missions had accomplished, he said.
People who work in science, math and engineering can affect the future, he said.
“We are willing to pay someone $6 million a year to coach basketball, but we will not pay engineers more than $50,000. We will not pay a teacher what is needed to change the world,” he said. “It’s the kid out there learning math and learning science and using the brain to do something; that’s the person who’s going to change the world.”
Technology and knowledge from space missions could be used on earth, he said. For example, because of an iodine removal system used in space, someone put it to commercial use “and people in sub-Saharan Africa now have pure drinking water,” he said.
“It’s not going to be a basketball player, not going to be a football player that will change the world,” he said.
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