Boy’s space dream becomes reality

Press, 14 January 1986, Page 6

Boy’s space dream becomes reality

NZPA-AP Space Centre, Houston

The long journey to space for Franklin Chang-Diaz began in his native Costa Rica with a boyhood dream of somehow getting to the United States and becoming an astronaut.

Against all odds, Mr Chang-Diaz has lived his fantasy with the launch of the space shuttle, Columbia. Mr Chang-Diaz, aged 35, was only seven when Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, soared into orbit in 1957. The event started a life-long fascination with space.

“When I was 11, I would spend hours in a cardboard spacecraft in my yard,” he

recalls. Most of his friends and family didn’t take his ambition seriously, said Mr Chang-Diaz. The United States was far away. He was unable to speak English and was not an American citizen. Nor was his family wealthy.

But such reasons did not discourage him. “By high school graduation, becoming an astronaut had become a very real thing with me,” he said. “I knew I would find a way.”

He wrote, in Spanish, to Werner von Braun, the Ger-man-born father of the United States Apollo rocket boosters, to ask how to become an astronaut.

Mr von Braun, by return letter, advised him to study science and mathematics, and to come to the United States.

Mr Chang-Diaz worked in a bank and saved his money. In 1968, his father bought him a one-way ticket to the state of Connecticut, the home of distant relatives who took him in.

“I arrived in this country with my suitcase, 50 dollars and no English,” he said. “But I wanted to be an astronaut.”

The high school diploma from Costa Rica was not accepted for admission to a United States college, so Mr Chang-Diaz went back to high school. What came after gradua-

tion was “a bit of luck,” he said. He was offered a scholarship to the University of Connecticut. “I didn’t know it, but the scholarship was supposed to be only for United States citizens. They thought I was from Puerto Rico and, therefore, a United States citizen,” he said. “They found out after they made the offer that I was from Costa Rica. They discovered the mistake, but they didn’t take it back.” The Connecticut legislature voted an exception for him, but it was for only one year, he said. That was enough. He earned grades that qualified him for other scholarships and in 1973 graduated with

a Bachelor of Science degree.

He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for graduate studies and in 1977 was awarded a doctorate degree in applied plasma physics. He quickly was granted United States citizenship when he started research in thermo-nuclear fusion.

Mr Chang-Diaz was selected as an astronaut in 1980, fulfilling the fantasy of that small boy who played with . cardboard spacecraft in a distant land.

He has become a national hero in his native land and will talk from orbit with the Costa Rican President, Mr Luis Alberto Monge, during the five-day space flight.