Astronaut who served on three shuttle missions plans to visit Clemson University

Friday, September 26, 2014 ~

Fred Gregory’s speech on Friday is open to public

CLEMSON, SC – An astronaut who served on three shuttle missions and later became NASA’s deputy administrator will be at Clemson University on Friday, September 26th to share his experiences and present a $10,000 scholarship to a physics student.

Fred Gregory’s visit to the Edgar Brown Union at 1:30 p.m. will be part of a program funded by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. John Farmer, a senior from Chesterfield, is one of 32 students nationwide to win one of this year’s scholarships.

Gregory logged more than 455 hours in space before shifting into management at NASA. He retired as deputy administrator in 2005 and now enjoys traveling.

He plans to give a speech in the Student Senate Chamber that will be free and open to the public.

It is a privilege and an honor to present the scholarships, Gregory said.

“You hear about these accomplishments, and my gosh, I wouldn’t have been competitive,” he said.

Farmer has done research on variable stars in the Milky Way at Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. He served as an intern at Fermilab, a renowned particle physics and accelerator laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

Farmer is also a skilled trumpet player, who graduated from the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities.

Recipients of the Astronaut Scholarship must exhibit motivation, imagination and exceptional performance in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).  It is one of the nation’s largest monetary awards given to undergraduate students based solely on merit.

“It’s a huge honor,” Farmer said. “It’s great to have all the hard work I’ve done over the past two years get noticed.”

Gregory’s first mission in space was as pilot of a Challenger mission in 1985. He commanded two other missions, one on Discovery in 1989 and one on Atlantis in 1991.

The second day of his Discovery mission was Thanksgiving. The crew deployed a $300-million satellite that weighed more than two tons. Then the astronauts ate a meal of irradiated turkey and freeze-dried vegetables.

Gregory said that before he went into space, he had expectations of what it would be like to be weightless and to look down at the Earth and up at the heavens. But it was nothing like actually being there.

“I was surprised at how beautiful the skies were,” he said. “My faith was magnified. Beliefs you had growing up were shattered when you realized we were part of the world, rather than a local community.”

Gregory said that many factors went into the success he’s had in his career, but two of the biggest were his parents.

“My parents realized you learn in school, but you learn so much more by being given freedom to journey by yourself,” he said.

Gregory, who grew up in Washington, D.C., attended camp in the Adirondack Mountains in Massachusetts when he was 7 years old and went again when he was 8.

When he was 11, he traveled alone by train to a Boy Scouts jamboree in California. He took bus trips by himself to New Mexico for another Boy Scouts gathering when he was as young at 12.

“By the time I was 13, I had seen most of the United States without any parental supervision,” he said. “It gave me a sense of adventure.”

Gregory began learning about airplanes early on in his life. He remembers that when he was 5 years old, he would sit at his father’s feet and listen to him talk to his friends, who were pilots.

“These were not ordinary pilots,” Gregory said. “These were fighter pilots.”

Gregory remembered going to an airshow in his teens and watching the Thunderbirds, an Air Force demonstration team.

He asked one of the pilots how he could fly like the Thunderbirds. The pilot told him that the Air Force was building an academy in Colorado and that he should go.

He did.

Gregory received a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1964 and a Master’s degree in Information Sciences from George Washington University in 1977.

Gregory served as a H-43 helicopter rescue pilot at Vance Air Force Base in Oklahoma and at Danang Air Base in Vietnam.

After returning to the United States, Gregory re-trained as a fixed-wing pilot, flying T-38s and F-4s.

Gregory then became a test pilot for the Air Force. He later was detailed as a research test pilot at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. Four years later, NASA selected him for astronaut training.

Gregory said that in the past 20 or 30 years America has become averse to taking chances, and he hopes the scholarship will help reverse the trend.

“One of the reasons for the program is to reinforce young folks and encourage them to be inventive and to be a risk-taker, to rebuild America’s image in the world,” Gregory said.

Scholarship recipients must attend one of 27 cooperating educational institutions, including Clemson University. They must be a U.S. citizen and at least a sophomore to apply.

Those eligible include students in engineering, mathematics and natural or applied science, with intentions to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their final degrees.

Farmer has been awarded several accolades while at Clemson. He was last school year’s “Outstanding Junior in the Sciences” for the College of Engineering and Science.

Farmer is one of three Clemson students to be awarded the 2014 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering, an award that covers up to $7,500 of tuition and expenses.

This is the second year in a row that an Astronaut Scholar has had a connection to Clemson’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Brenden Roberts, last year’s winner, majored in physics and mathematical sciences.

“It speaks very highly of the department,” Farmer said.

 

 

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