OGDEN — "OK, when I say 'go,' you'll have 10 seconds to touch your toes."
Ed Douglas has repeated that sentence a thousand times. Maybe a hundred thousand.
But it’s the smiles on his student’s faces that keep him going.
“I have the best job in the world,” Douglas said. “Who knows what these kids are going to end up doing in life? Who knows if we’re teaching the future people who will go back to the moon or help people get back to the moon?”
Douglas is the director of Astro Camp.
It’s a space- and science-based program operating on the second floor of Odyssey Elementary School in Ogden. The school features a large space shuttle coming out of it, which, right away, gets the attention of students coming here for science field trips.
"I thought it was going to be really fun because you really don't see a space shuttle coming out of a school very often," said sixth-grader Cameron Schultz, who was visiting Astro Camp from Heritage Elementary School in Ogden.
Schultz is also one of the students who couldn’t touch her toes. In fact, no student could in the scientific experiment Douglas was showing them.
It’s called the Newton chair.
Douglas said he could spend hours teaching students about the law of physics and the G-Forces astronauts experience during launch, but it takes just 15 seconds to show them.
He has them sit in a chair, and then he spins them around a circular-shaped room. Students experience 3 G-Forces, which keeps them pinned to their chairs.
"No, I couldn’t touch my toes,” said sixth-grader Milton Love. “It's hard. He's like ‘touch your toes, touch your toes,’ and I'm like, 'I can't, I can't!'"
Douglas said being an astronaut is important, but for every one astronaut, there are thousands of people behind the scenes who help get them into space.
"We want these kids to still be excited about not only the space program, but science,” said Douglas, “because we're not out just to make little astronauts out of everybody because they're only the most visible part of the space program. We want them to get excited about engineers and other aspects of space and science."
Every day at Astro Camp is a fun day, but Friday was the 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, which Douglas says reminds him of how important his program is.
His students are too young to remember the disaster, and many said they didn’t know what the Challenger explosion was all about.
Douglas, however, says he’ll never forget.
“I was watching the launch because the teacher was going into space, and it was a big deal,” Douglas recalled, “and then it exploded.”
Douglas figured, after such a setback for the space program, the best thing he could do was start something to keep children interested in space and science.
He started Astro Camp 20 years ago for students all across Utah, hoping his small place in the world will maybe spark a big difference.
“They say that the first person on Mars is probably a fifth-grader right now," he said. "Who knows if that one person is a student who went through here or will go through here?”
Several engineers and four Air Force pilots have gone through Astro Camp when they were in elementary school. Douglas said if one of his students goes to Mars one day, all he wants is a rock.
“That would be awesome.”
For more information about Astro Camp, visit www.astrocamputah.org.
E-mail: acabrero@desnews.com